


The Nature of Things

by greygerbil



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: A/B/O, Canon-typical discussions of sexual abuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-08-17 00:12:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 44,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8123056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: When the young alpha Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr. joins the Manhattan SVU, he is excited to get to meet Rafael Barba, who is somewhat infamous for being the only omega A.D.A. in the U.S. so far to work with a sex crimes unit. Sadly, Sonny does not leave the best first impression, but during the investigation of a serial killer case, Sonny and Rafael start to work more closely together and Rafael might find out that he judged Sonny too harshly at first.





	1. Chapter 1

“So, Barba – that guy’s an omega, right?”

“Ask him yourself, just like that,” Fin said, not looking up from his computer screen. Rollins grinned into her coffee cup.

Sonny glanced between them. He’d been with the Manhattan SVU for three weeks now, which for his track record wasn’t too bad, and he was reasonably sure that the other two detectives were just messing with him, not actually being hostile. You could tell the difference after a while and Sonny had had ample opportunity to learn the signs because apparently he rubbed people the wrong way. So far, the hindsight that he had done it just hadn’t really helped him turn things around in his next units – but this was a new start.

“I mean, I know,” Sonny admitted. He actually knew a fair bit more about Rafael Barba, too, but you had to start a conversation some way, right? “But I couldn’t’ve told from the way he acted when I met him.”

“Maybe that says something about your qualities as a detective,” Rollins suggested, with a shrug.

Sonny rolled his eyes.

“Nah, I mean it. I met a couple of omegas who were lawyers when I worked Homicide. From my experience, it’s easy to pick them out. They get up in your face right away.”

“Does that surprise you?”

Now Rollins, perching on the edge of her desk, _was_ looking honestly sceptical as she considered him.

“No,” Sonny said, quickly. He knew he ran his mouth sometimes, but he didn’t actually not know what empathy was. “I realise it’s gotta be tough, stepping into a room knowing most people think you can’t handle the pressure. It makes sense and all. Just surprises me Barba isn’t that way.”

“He’s not exactly a ray of sunshine, either,” Fin noted.

“He seems more sure of himself, though. Like he doesn’t have anything to prove, you know? I guess he’s just a better actor, but I never got the feeling he thinks anyone would doubt there’s a good reason he’s there.”

“That who is where?”

Benson must’ve snuck up on him or something because she was suddenly at his right shoulder and almost made Sonny jump. From the way she and Barba had talked when her son had gotten threatened by that Mexican trafficker, Sonny could tell they were probably friends, so he felt a little like having been caught gossiping by a teacher.

“Barba,” he said, slowly. “I was just thinking, ‘cause he’s an omega and all…”

Benson’s eyebrows shot up almost to her hairline.

“You don’t have a problem with that, do you?” she interrupted.

It was Sonny’s turn to look surprised.

“No, of course not.”

Benson glanced at Rollins, who pulled the corners of her mouth downwards and shrugged her shoulders again.

“I’ve got to admit, that’s where I thought this was going, too.”

“No!” Sonny protested, again. In his indignation, he turned to face both her and Benson. “He’s pretty amazing, I know that. There’s only two other omega A.D.A.s in this city and they both work Commercial Crimes. There’s a handful omega A.D.A.s doing Homicide and Vice across the country, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of one attached to a sex crimes unit.”

Which made sense, because omega A.D.A.s in themselves were a pretty new idea altogether, and the last thing anyone wanted was to place supposedly breakable omegas in the path of dangerous sex predators.

“You know a lot about this,” Rollins said.

“Yeah. I mean, I do law at evening school.”

He’d probably mentioned that like a few times, at least guessing by the way Rollins turned her gaze upwards as if she had to summon all her patience.

“It’s interesting!” Sonny pressed on. “Things go well, there’s gonna be way more omegas doing this sort of job in the future. Getting to work with Barba and pick his brain, that’s a great opportunity.”

“I’m happy to know you won’t clash with our counsellor because he is a good one. Even though he’s not part of the SVU squad, we value his cooperation, so in a way, he has seniority over you,” Benson said, not unkindly.

Sonny got that warning anyway ‘cause it wasn’t exactly subtle. Still, he had nothing to fear on that front. The last thing he wanted to do was piss Barba off. Sonny didn’t plan on challenging his position at all. He knew Barba must’ve worked himself to the bone for that spot in the D.A.’s office and had to deserve it. Sonny just wanted to learn from him.

Of course, Sonny wasn’t an omega. As of now, omegas were only allowed desk jobs in the police force, and on an SVU squad, where omegas were still the largest group of victims and alphas usually the perps, reality was you weren’t likely to see one in a long while. They only had one beta in Fin, which was standard procedure because in case there were omegas in heat around, even staunch alpha detectives might start getting distracted. Now, obviously a good officer had enough self-control not to jump anyone, but Sonny doubted he’d be able to properly question an omega smelling good enough to eat and remember their answers and stuff like that.

Still, you needed alphas to go up against the usual SVU perps, who often didn’t take anyone of another nature seriously; and besides, alphas were just more likely to end up getting promoted, anyway. Last Sonny remembered, about seventy percent of all detectives across the boards were alphas, and you could start chucking on the percentage points there the higher you went up the career ladder. Alpha meant natural-born leader, after all, or so the story went. Sonny, for his part, was determined to prove he actually deserved to be called an alpha in that sense and if taking notes from an unusual omega was the way to go, he didn’t think there was any shame in it.

-

The first time Sonny got a chance to talk to Barba one on one was when Benson sent him over with a bunch of old photos they’d collected at a victim’s apartment. This case wasn’t a tough one to crack, considering the vic had already identified his alpha ex-girlfriend as the one who’d assaulted him, but proving it was another thing altogether.

Carmen, Barba’s secretary, knocked on the door for Sonny and waited patiently before Barba called for her to come in. Sonny was led into a spacious office with big windows looking out onto the street. Behind Barba’s heavy wooden desk – which had a few curious but tasteful knick-knacks on it, such as a statue of four little silver dancers –, there was a bookcase with volumes on the law. The walls were decorated with black-and-white pictures of New York. He hadn’t tried to imagine what Barba’s office would look like, but now Sonny thought it was exactly the room he’d expected a man like him to inhabit: a little vintage, very classy, really well-organised, and big enough to make it clear that he’d managed to gather some attention from the upper echelons.

Barba was currently busying himself with a collection of papers spread out over a round conference table in the far corner of the room. Every time Sonny had seen him, he was wearing another outfit that could have come straight out of a menswear catalogue. This time, it was a dark blue three-piece suit with a white shirt and silver tie.

“Thanks, Carmen. Detective Carisi,” Barba said, still concentrating on the papers. “To what do I owe the honour?”

“The Lieu wanted me to hand these over to you.”

Sonny pulled a few of the photos out of the brown paper bag so Barba could see what he was referring to. He did deign to look up and, after a moment of considering the images, nodded his head.

“Yes, I’ve been waiting for those. Put them on the table.”

Sonny did, cocking his head as he glanced at the papers Barba was going through. They were medical bills.

“What do you need the photos for?”

For the first time since Sonny had stepped into the room, Barba looked him in the face. He had pretty, forest-green eyes that watched people with the deliberating curiosity of a big cat.

“The victim said you should be able to see signs of physical abuse on him for at least the last couple years. It’s not good evidence, since there’ll be no name tag on the bruises that says who caused them. Maybe I can get away with showing a few photos if I think of a good enough reason, though. This is similar evidence,” he gestured at the medical bills, “but the jury is made up of people. A picture will move them more than numbers and letters.”

“Smart,” Sonny said, and tucked that bit of strategy away for later.

“I try. Was there anything else?” Barba asked.

“Yeah.” Sonny smiled and dug around his head for that speech he’d rehearsed to himself at least half a dozen times now. “I just wanted to tell you, I’m really glad I get to work with you. I mean, I’ve already heard about you in law school and everything.”

The counsellor’s head whipped up again, his gaze refocusing on Sonny.

“I wasn’t aware I was part of the curriculum at Fordham Law,” he said, warily.

“Well, not that, but the professor’s been talking about you as an example. It’s pretty amazing what you did, after all. It’d have been difficult enough just being an omega, but it’s not like you came from the best part of town or anything – no offence.”

“Thank you, I’m aware of my own biography.”

That was one thing Sonny had already learned about Rafael Barba – he never gave a straight answer when he could think of a smart comment instead. Well, Sonny had developed a pretty thick skin concerning insults, veiled or not, being handed between units as he’d been, so he wasn’t going to let that deter him.

“The first time I heard about you, I was really surprised you’d studied law at all. When you started college, wasn’t the best you could hope for some law firm that had enough clout that they could take a bet on an omega? Most clients still don’t want you guys representing them today, and the government wasn’t even considering omegas back then.”

Barba had stopped messing with the papers and was now looking at him through narrowed eyes.

“You’re an alpha, aren’t you? How is this relevant to you? _If_ you manage to get pass the bar, you won’t be facing these problems.”

“Well, there’s omegas in my class and all. Plus, I’m just curious. Aren’t you scared, working with the SVU?”

“Are you offering to hold my hand and pat my head if I was, Detective? I knew what the job entailed before I took it,” Barba said calmly, raising a brow at him.

“It must make handling most perps difficult, though, being an omega.”

“It makes it different.” Glancing at the clock, Barba straightened up. “I have a meeting now, so unless you have anything to discuss that is actually relevant to the case…”

“Uh, no,” Carisi admitted.

Barba whisked past him towards his desk. When Sonny hadn’t moved from his spot by the table by the time Barba had picked up his leather briefcase, he raised his brows again. “Do you need me to show you the way to the door, Detective?”

-

Sonny wasn’t sure whether Barba didn’t like him. As Fin had pointed out, he wasn’t generally cuddly, not with anyone. For the next few weeks of his time at the SVU, however, Barba seemed to zero in on every comment Sonny made like it was a special pleasure to make Sonny in particular look like an idiot. Sonny had heard rumours that Barba just didn’t work well with alphas, but truth be told, people said that about every omega who had clawed their way higher up than an entry level position; Sonny thought it usually meant that alphas didn’t work well with them. Besides, while Fin was a beta, Barba didn’t seem to mind Rollins, who was an alpha, too, and Benson and Barba, despite regular spats, clearly got along.

Whatever the reason for Barba’s hostility was, it sucked, because if Barba had made his way this far as an omega, he had to be a pretty damn good attorney and Sonny would have loved to look over his shoulder sometimes.

That Barba really knew his stuff was easy to see when he advised them on cases, but the first time that Sonny got to watch him in court was eight weeks into his stay with the Manhattan SVU (which was also a new record for him and slowly, Sonny was beginning to believe he might be allowed to stick around). It was a matter which had been ready to go to trial before he’d arrived, but been subjected to the usual slow creep of the justice system. Rollins filled him in on the details on their way while they sat in traffic that flowed like resin: the perp was a guy who had supposedly raped two, possibly more of the interns in the branch of the bank he worked for; real numbers were hard to get their hands on, what with the usual problems of vics not coming forward and so on. A win was not a sure thing. They had no initial outcry, though there were two victims ready to talk. However, the rapes had taken place during their heats, which basically forced at least physical agreement on the omegas. A rape during a heat was almost impossible to prove. Ten minutes in, few omegas still had the mental capacity left to say no, so consent became blurry and nine out of ten cases, juries ended up giving the alphas the benefit of the doubt.

The first part of trial was dedicated to the stories of the victims. Sonny was squeezed in the third row between Benson and Rollins, and behind a lot of people in suits, who he thought must be the banker’s colleagues. As he watched Barba work the first vic, Sonny wondered if he could have forced himself to be as mercilessly precise in tickling out the details as the A.D.A. was. Sure, Sonny had questioned victims, but the atmosphere was different at the station. You were allowed to say you were sorry and give them room to calm down and there weren’t like a hundred pairs of eyes on both of you. Omegas were supposed to be more compassionate and prone to emotional reactions, but evidently Barba hadn’t gotten that memo. He was extremely matter-of-fact in his interrogation, except for an occasional word of encouragement – not an asshole, but definitely determined to let the jury hear everything.

The second victim fit the bill for your typical omega, though. He was crying before he was even on the stand and though Barba managed to get his story relatively straight, Sonny was afraid the defence attorney would really do his head in – that guy would be looking forward to such an easily confused target. But the lawyer hadn’t taken Barba into consideration. Suddenly, Barba called objection after objection, some pretty spurious, but each of them enough to give the poor kid on the stand a breather here and there. Sonny waited for the judge to snap, but Barba either knew her, or knew how to read her, ‘cause he always managed to find just the right rhythm not to get whacked on the head for interrupting court procedure on purpose. Maybe that boy sobbing his heart out gathered a little sympathy from the judge as well.

After a few of the perp’s co-workers, who were mostly character witnesses, came the defendant himself, Theodore Galecki. Silver-haired and tall, with a suit that matched Barba’s in chic, he seemed to own the stand the moment he sat down, as if he’d chosen this place for himself because he liked it, not because anyone had told him to be there. 

“When I had sex with them, they were in heat. They asked me, I complied,” was his answer to Barba’s first question, which was what Galecki himself thought about the charges.

“As you heard, your former interns deny that. Ms. Rose says she was alone in the staff kitchen trying to finish her tasks for the day, and Mr. Theatcher came to your office to ask for leave to go home.”

“Of course they would say that. I know some omegas get shy, but it’s really not my fault they changed their minds after the fact.”

Galecki threw the jury a winning smile, shrugging.

“Going with your version of the story, have you ever thought that as their boss, it would be inappropriate to take them up on their request? You must be aware of the… effect you have on omegas.”

There was a curious little hitch before the last few words. Only now did Sonny realise that Rafael was standing closer to the stand than he’d been when he’d questioned the vics and witnesses – not inappropriately so, but noticeable, anyway. His voice had lost a lot of its edge, too.

“I’m not going to lie: They often end up at my doorstep and I never claimed to be a saint.”

Rafael gave a quiet huff of a laugh, like the man had cracked a clever joke. Galecki smiled again, pleased with his reaction.

“And you made a comment to your colleague Ms. Chandler earlier that you were convinced that Mr. Theatcher was already interested in you, didn’t you?”

“He was. I probably don’t have to tell you, Mr. Barba, but omegas are drawn to authority and my personality and my position, well, especially in combination, it _is_ difficult to resist for your kind. You know what I mean, you have superiors, too.”

“Mr. Galecki,” the judge said, in a warning tone, “it’s not your place to speculate about Mr. Barba’s private life.”

“It’s fine,” Barba said evenly.

From the look on the defence attorney’s face, though, Sonny could see not everybody in the room thought so. In the jury, there were a few puzzled expressions as well. That alpha macho talk might’ve been pretty standard around a table in a bar, but it wasn’t making Galecki look good here considering the circumstances.

However, Barba was still holding eye contact with Galecki and, looking at his profile, Sonny noticed a friendly smile he had never seen on Barba’s face before – it was indulgent, almost smitten. It also held Galecki’s attention very well.

“So if you are open to… relations with your co-workers and thought you knew about their attraction, it wouldn’t surprise you to be approached.”

“Objection! Relevance?” Galecki’s lawyer interjected.

Pretty weak, Sonny thought, and the judge didn’t seem convinced, either.

Barba turned to her, looking as innocent as could be. “I’m trying to establish Mr. Galecki’s mindset. I think he should be allowed to explain that, at least, with the charges levelled against him?”

“I’m not sure why my lawyer _wouldn’t_ want me to do that,” Galecki said, with a patronisingly fond glance towards Barba, who smiled once more.

Galecki’s lawyer sat down again. “Withdrawn,” he muttered, clearly unhappy. He seemed to understand that his client’s mindset was not going to help him out here.

“As I said, I’m used to attention from omegas who work with me and I am old enough to tell when they are interested,” Galecki continued.

It occurred to Sonny then that Galecki thought he was holding the reins. Barba’s questions all seemed like softballs and he was even leaning slightly towards Galecki as he listened, turning his eyes up to where the stately man sat on the stand. Another thought struck Sonny like lightning that moment: Barba was fucking flirting with the rapist.

“Mr. Galecki, is it possible you have misinterpreted the intentions of your interns? The victims said that they refused you.”

Barba sounded almost concerned for Galecki.

“There’s no way to misinterpret an omega in heat,” Galecki said. “Not if you know what you’re looking for.”

“Did you have a conversation, though?”

“At this stage, omegas are really beyond talking sense. You’ve been there, I’m sure. You omegas want alphas to take control.”

And there it was. Just from the way Barba’s back straightened, Sonny could tell he’d gotten what he wanted out of Galecki. With a curt nod, Barba turned to the jury.

“I think we all know what that means,” he said, and his voice instantly snapped back from the mode of friendly conversation he’d employed with Galecki to a self-assured tone that easily filled the room. “Our expectations shape our reality, but that doesn’t make Mr. Galecki’s actions excusable. If I take someone else’s watch because I’m earnestly convinced it is mine, I’ll still have stolen it. Either he is much less intelligent than he claims to be, or he knows very well that the victims told him repeatedly that they did not want intercourse and he ignored them because he thought he knew better, or because he simply didn’t care. The heat might sap an omega’s strength to resist eventually, but it’s not an instant off-switch for the brain.”

-

After an hour, the jury had decided on sexual misconduct, a class A misdemeanour. Galecki went on the registry, but not to jail – he was a first time offender, though Sonny really didn’t believe _that_ was true, either. There were still enough people that thought that an alpha couldn’t really help it anyway when they smelled an omega in heat, so that would have been considered in Galecki’s favour, as well as the consent that omegas in heat seemed to implicitly give by eventually not fighting back anymore. Though Barba had gotten just the performance he had needed out of Galecki, Sonny knew none of the squad had been daring enough to be sure of a victory before the jury had returned.

They caught up with Barba after the verdict outside the court room.

“You did good, Barba,” Benson said.

“Yeah, Galecki’s a charming guy. Thought he might weasel his way out of it,” Fin agreed.

With a frown, the A.D.A. shrugged. He already had his omnipresent Blackberry in his hand again.

“I’m going to hold off celebrations for the day when I can actually try to pin rape in _any_ degree on someone forcing themselves on an omega in heat. Galecki would have deserved it.”

“Juries don’t go for that in these circumstances,” Benson agreed with a small sigh. “But it’s better than nothing. I’m happy we got a conviction at all.”

Sonny had held his breath because it was clear by now that Barba didn’t really _ever_ appreciate his input, but the fact that everyone was just glossing over what had just happened in the court room finally overwhelmed his patience.

“Sorry, but, Counsellor – that was incredibly risky, what you did in there. You flirted with him – the hell were you thinking?!”

All eyes turned to him, but Sonny didn’t care this time. Barba stared at him, too, looking as if he was seriously wondering who had dropped Sonny on his head as a child.

“Brilliant deduction, Carisi, of course I did. This man wouldn’t have entertained an uppity omega getting in his face. Plus, as long as he way stroking his ego thinking he had the attorney wrapped around his little finger, he was more likely to boast of his knowledge of what omegas _really_ want.” Unimpressed, Rafael turned his gaze back to his Blackberry. “What _do_ they teach you at Fordham Law?”

Though he caught the warning glance from Benson, Sonny took an involuntary step closer towards Barba, who immediately pulled himself up to his full height – still half a head shorter than Sonny.

“I get that it worked, but it’s not really _smart_ considering he’s gonna be running around free now, Counsellor.”

“You seem to labour under some misconception that this job is not inherently dangerous, Carisi. I’ll do what’s necessary and I’d appreciate if you could stop berating me for it. If you don’t have your protective instincts under control, then I suggest you go to a shelter and get yourself a three-legged puppy to coddle.” He turned to Benson. “I’ll see you later.”

When Barba had vanished around a corner, Rollins elbowed Sonny.

“Good job,” she said, sarcastically.

“No, but – I’m not crazy, am I?” Sonny insisted, staring at her in a bid for some damn common sense around here. “It’s not ‘cause he’s an omega, not that in itself – but shouldn’t an omega not provoke some known for raping omegas?”

“It’s Barba’s business, in the end,” Benson said, and her voice softened a little bit. Hopefully she’d noticed that Sonny wasn’t just trying to be contrarian, or an alpha who didn’t know where the line was. “He has been doing this for a while. Trust him to know how far he can push it.”

“The first trial we had him on, Barba let the perp strangle him with a belt to demonstrate that his idea of erotic asphyxiation was too violent,” Rollins pointed out.

For a moment, Sonny thought she had to be making fun of him now, but Benson nodded her head.

“Wow,” Sonny muttered, taken aback. “Yeah, that’s a little worse than sweet-talking the defendant, I’ll give you that.”

He wished he could’ve been more pissed at Barba for dressing him down like he had, or for being a reckless idiot, but deep down he was also impressed despite knowing better. Even most alphas weren’t this ballsy. With a sudden twinge of guilt, he wondered if Barba’s assessment about his ‘protective instincts’ wasn’t actually all the way off. Barba didn’t do this stuff for kicks, he did it for a good cause, and Sonny had always been a sucker for an omega with their heart in the right place.


	2. Chapter 2

It had been five months since he had started working for the SVU, and Dominick “Nah, call me Sonny” Carisi Jr. was like a persistent thorn in Rafael’s side. Having heard of Carisi’s phenomenal track record leading up to his stint at the Manhattan unit from Liv, Rafael had hoped that he would be rid of him before long. Sadly, however, Liv _was_ a competent leader and had managed to straighten Carisi out into a mostly functional detective.

In truth, it had never been his police work that Rafael had taken issue with. If it hadn’t been at least solid, Liv would’ve handed Carisi straight on to the next unfortunate district, and while the word tact seemed to be missing from his vocabulary, he had a certain raw compassion he brought to the cases instead. It never seemed to Rafael like he wasn’t interested in the victims, which would have been the first, second and third strike in his book. One might also say in his favour that he had shaved off that hideous moustache, but that was where the compliments from Rafael ended.

Carisi had already not endeared himself from the get-go by clumsily trying to flatter his way into Rafael’s good graces. He then spent the rest of goodwill Rafael had had by playing himself up as his protector after the Galecki trial. This alone would have been annoying, as Rafael was not one to appreciate even well-meant meddling in his affairs by overbearing alphas, but matters grew worse when he realised that Carisi spent an inordinate amount of time looking at him like his gaze was glued to Rafael’s face and, occasionally, his backside.

Rafael knew the type of alpha. Carisi was not the first one to react to him like this and wouldn’t be the last. They looked to feed their ego by being the one to seize the strong and the lonely ones, like some conquistador trampling over difficult terrain and ramming their flag in the ground for all to see. Rafael had learned to recognise them the painful way. Right out of law school, when he had started working at a big firm, he had spent a couple of months dating one of his colleagues, who, as he had later learned, had actually asked him out on a bet made between a few of the other younger lawyers: They had wanted to see who could crack the haughty omega. Eventually, Rita Calhoun, who’d been asked to participate in the bet, had taken pity on him and clued him in. Rafael still remembered sitting in an empty café with her, with the bite of the sandwich he’d just taken lodged in his throat, as he listened to her detailing how his boyfriend had described their first heat together to the rest of the new hires. The humiliation had etched itself deep into Rafael’s soul.

Being in the crosshairs of one of these alphas wasn’t a compliment; it wasn’t about Rafael as a person, or an attorney, or even just an attractive, warm body. His value was entirely theoretical, just measured in what the alpha could gain in self-confidence or reputation by subduing him.

How aware of this Carisi was was anyone’s guess, of course. To Rafael, he didn’t seem like someone who overburdened themselves with contemplation of their own nature. Life had handed him an easy hand in that regard: he was an alpha, obviously suited and happy to be one, and why would he struggle with his desires when they were just what everyone said was natural?

If his whole demeanour hadn’t informed Rafael about Sonny’s intentions, his age certainly would have. Rafael was twelve years older than the alpha and in general way past what anyone would consider a decent mating age for his kind; thirty-five was usually the last cut-off date for any omega who hadn’t yet managed to find a mate and Rafael was seven years past that. It was ridiculous to even consider that Carisi might have an honest interest.

Usually, Rafael was very good at getting rid of unwanted attention. His sharp tongue cut down any alpha to size and most of them eventually realised he wasn’t worth the hassle. Not so Carisi. Months in, he still wagged a metaphorical tail whenever he threw in some piece of law advice like the most annoying student in class, obviously looking for Rafael’s approval. The fact that Rafael rarely let him catch a break and actively poured scorn on him whenever Carisi dared to be worried or scared for him seemed to leave Carisi unscathed. He was momentarily angry or disappointed or sulking, of course, but if Rafael hoped to keep him that way, it never worked.

When Rafael returned to the station this Monday afternoon, he could already tell that Carisi had once more reset his mood since the last time they had spoken, when Rafael had inquired of Sonny whether he was asking a slew of barely case-related law questions because he wasn’t in the mood to do research for his own homework. Carisi even smiled at Rafael – a dimpled, bright and affable smile which Rafael always tried not to notice because it was one that would have an easy time charming anyone who had a mind to let it.

“Counsellor,” Carisi said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“So I’ve heard. What was it you called me in for?”

Carisi nodded at Fin, who got up from his desk; Rollins’ spot was empty and he didn’t see Liv anywhere, either, so they were probably out in the field.

“We’ll show you. You want a coffee?” Carisi asked, already on his feet and on the way to the small, battered coffee machine that had found its resting place on a filing cabinet on the left-hand side of the room. Rafael suspected it had been moved out of the staff kitchen to be closer at hand. The officers here rarely worked nine to five.

“I assume this is going to take a while?” Rafael asked, already rearranging his tightly packed schedule in his head.

“Probably, yeah. We’ve gotta review some files with you.”

Carisi dug through a storage cupboard and found a cup commemorating the London Summer Olympics 2012, into which he poured what Rafael found to be bitter, lukewarm liquid after the first sip. He allowed Carisi to usher him to a whiteboard on which the SVU had pinned a number of pictures. Rafael recognised the blonde woman as one who’d been found dead two weeks ago, and he thought he vaguely remembered the face of a middle-aged man on the wall from somewhere, too. There was also a Hispanic woman who he couldn’t place at all.

“Those are the Solman, Jones and Lopez cases,” Fin said, pointing in the direction of the photos.

The name Lopez didn’t ring a bell, but Jones shook memories of the man awake. It had been a little less than a year since Rafael had last seen his face and those of his elderly parents. They’d never been able to give them an answer as to who had killed their son, since the only lead they had had turned out to be a dead end.

“I assume you didn’t group unsolved cases for fun.”

“Rollins noticed when going through some old files that these two cases,” Carisi pointed at the photos of Jones and Solman, “are really similar. Like, they were raped, had about the same marks on their bodies, they were both found in the inner city with most their clothes missing, and, get this: they were both killed with an overdose of heroin. We checked around and this,” he pointed at the photo titled Lopez, “is a vic from the South Bronx, from about five months ago. Same pattern, too.”

Rafael let his gaze sweep over the photos again, digesting what Carisi was implicitly telling him.

“Alright. With three people, we’re at the official amount needed to label your potential murderer a serial killer, which means at least the media will be happy. Those are their favourites,” Rafael muttered. “Is there anything else connecting them? It almost looks like someone went out of their way to avoid a pattern.”

They had a college-aged white woman in Solman, then Jones, who was a black man and past forty, and finally Lopez, another woman, age-wise somewhere in the middle between the two.

“Yeah, looks like it at first,” Fin said, “but they got one thing in common: they were all omegas without a mate, living alone and earning a living.”

“Charming,” Rafael scoffed. That combination of attributes in the victims did not bode well for his blood pressure during the preparation of the case. “Did these people know each other?”

“Nope,” Carisi said. “Not that we can tell, anyway. Jones worked at the Mid-Manhattan Library, Lopez at Starbucks in Tribeca and Solman was a kindergarten teacher on Staten Island. We’re looking into it, though, to see if there was anyone who they all knew.”

“That’s going to be difficult in a library and a coffee shop,” Rafael said. “They must’ve had hundreds of customers each day.”

“There’s a distance of seven months between Jones and Lopez, and four months between Lopez and Solman, who we found a couple weeks ago. With luck, we got a bit of time. Could be the guy’s gettin’ faster, though, or some of the vics were just processed as dead junkies,” Fin continued, while pointing at a rudimentary timeline someone had drawn with a sharpie, marking the dates the bodies had been found and the estimated times of death.

“We already ordered all available autopsies from the dead omegas in the city who died with heroin in their system in the past five years,” Carisi said, gesturing in the direction of a stack of papers on the oval table next to them. “Plus, there is a suspect in the Lopez case, so we’ll check his alibi for the others.”

“Barring him, do you have any idea what you’re looking for?” Rafael asked, taking a gulp of the coffee. It was bad, but it was still coffee.

“Well, we can’t exclude anybody, but with this kind of thing, it’s usually alphas,” Fin said.

Carisi tapped the sharpie he had produced from somewhere against the palm of his hand. “Hey, if it were one, we could get him for a hate crime, right?” he noted, suddenly.

“That depends on how good your evidence is,” Rafael said, not ready to admit he’d had the same thought after hearing what connected the victims. Praising him would only encourage Carisi.

However, the fact that Rafael had not completely shot down the idea seemed to be enough to put that smile back on Carisi’s face. Rafael had to practice self-control not to squash him with a needless, cruel remark. Sadly, there were more important things to worry about now than Carisi’s weird behaviour around him.

“Okay,” he said, placing the cup down on the table. “Keep me updated on this. If we really have an active serial killer, then we should get results before some media outlet puts the pieces together and we’ve got another city-wide panic – and, ideally, before anyone else turns up dead.”

-

“This one probably slipped the net ‘cause he was actually on drugs. They thought he’d just gotten the dose wrong.”

While Carisi talked, Rafael slowly went through the meagre contents of a thin cardboard folder the detective had brought into his office. It had been a couple of days since the SVU had first posited their serial killer theory and, combing through the backlog of drug-related omega autopsies, they had indeed found another possible victim.

“There’s no sign of rape, but he did have anal sex right before death and, well, it could be he just didn’t struggle a lot. The autopsy report said he was in the first stage of the heat, so, uh, you know.”

Carisi’s stream of words, which had been going for a good five minutes, describing the steps of their investigation, dried up. Looking up, Rafael saw him with his mouth half-open, groping for words with a sheepish expression his face.

“Are you worried you’ll have to explain the concept of heat-related submission to me, Carisi?”

It was a well-known fact that physically, an omega in heat would eventually stop trying to fight, even if the alpha had forced themselves on them. This caused the legal nightmare they had faced in the Galecki case and many others before that when trying to prove a lack of consent.

“No, ‘course not,” Carisi said, quickly, “I mean, you probably know better than me.”

Rafael raised his eyes from the folder and let his gaze cut into Carisi. This time, he didn’t have to say anything to make the alpha look like a dog left standing in the rain, so at least he seemed to have realised, for once, that he had said something massively inappropriate.

“Excuse me?”

“Just – because you’re an omega, after all,” Carisi said quickly, stumbling over his own tongue.

“Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed.”

Briefly, Rafael wondered why Carisi had tripped over something so relatively common-place for their job. Did he think he had to protect Rafael’s delicate feelings from the realities of biology? Some traditional alphas had been raised with the mindset that mentioning sex around omegas was improper, but you could hardly avoid that in a _sex_ crimes unit.

Pushing aside his thoughts on Carisi, he picked up one of the few pages again, looking at the photo of a corpse of an emaciated young omega. Just another drug-related death in New York, nothing to write home about for the doctors who had looked over his lifeless form, he imagined. No wonder it had slipped through the cracks 

“I assume he worked, too?”

“He manned the register at a small 24-hour-shop ‘round the corner from where he lived – also on his own.”

Rafael made an undefined noise. That was just as unhelpfully random as the jobs of the other victims.

“ _If_ this is indeed all the work of one person, we’ll have to see how many of the rapes and murders we can actually bring him or her to trial for. I don’t see a lot of hope for this one, to be honest. He is easy to dismiss as a casualty of his lifestyle and the defence will try.”

“Right,” Carisi said, taking the photo from Barba with a thoughtful gaze. “Well, it’s still good to know about him to verify our theories... alibis and all that.” Another small pause before he put the paper down with an almost rueful gaze. “Man, he’s _really_ young.”

“Many of them are,” Rafael said, finding it in himself to remove some of the usual bite from his voice as he saw Carisi’s regretful face. 

“We could still find evidence, you know? We probably got some time before we get the killer, anyway. I don’t think this Rybeck has any relatives that care, but still…” Carisi took a deep breath and smiled. “I mean, you’ve turned around some tough cases in court and we aren’t so bad ourselves on the investigation side of things. There’s still a chance his murderer could be convicted for what they did to him.”

To Rafael, Carisi, at thirty, was young, too. He wondered if he’d still smile as much as he did now if he stayed with the SVU until he was Rafael’s age. Little as he was inclined to the alpha, knowing that someone was about to slowly and thoroughly get their belief in humanity and in the significance of their own work crushed out of them was not a pleasant thought. Carisi annoyed Rafael, but when he saw him earnestly pondering the file of someone like poor dead Ian Rybeck here, he could spare a little regret for his good-hearted naïveté that would inevitably be lost to the world eventually.

“Maybe there’s a chance,” Rafael found himself saying, looking at the photo again. Perhaps somewhere inside him there was just a little bit left of whatever ideas of doing right had drawn him to this job once upon a time and that rest resonated with the unwarranted hope Carisi brought to the table. Rafael knew better, but he, too, wanted to believe that they might be able to do something for Rybeck.


	3. Chapter 3

Sonny didn’t know when it happened that he had started to look at Barba in a different way, but to be fair, Barba was hot and Sonny just an alpha and yeah, maybe he’d let his gaze linger a little too long sometimes, but that wasn’t a crime, right?

That was all it used to be. Sure, he’d admired him, too, but that obviously didn’t go both ways. At first, Barba was attractive but unapproachable, and then attractive and mostly a bastard. However, he was always someone whose attention Sonny wanted and whom he learned a lot from even while Barba seemed determined to bat away every law-related idea Carisi gave; his corrections, mean-spirited as they could be, were still helpful.

And while the months passed, he realised Barba also wasn’t all thunder, either. He talked to victims and families with feeling, there was still his friendship with Benson, and when the SVU rushed headlong into trouble, he did his best to keep them on the leash of reason, but was usually by their side in whatever righteous messes they got themselves into (even if he complained about it).

Suffice to say, it didn’t really surprise Sonny too much when he closed his eyes one evening in bed, lazily touching his soft cock, considering jerking off really just to tire himself out to get to sleep quickly, and Barba’s face flashed in front of his eyes. Sonny had seen him just that day to show him Rybeck, the new potential vic on their serial rapist-killer case, and coincidentally had made a complete idiot of himself. Strangely enough, Barba hadn’t seemed too displeased with him when he’d dismissed him, though. He hadn’t even gotten a sarcastic remark to send him on his way; Barba had been looking at the Rybeck file instead.

It was kinda low, fantasising about a colleague, Sonny knew that. Especially with Barba – he couldn’t believe he wanted anyone to think of him as ever being out of control when every strand of his hair, every fold in his suit was always perfectly in place. Even speaking of heat-induced submission in front of him had had Sonny stammer like school boy as his brain had tried and failed to combine those words with the man in front of him, realising Barba must’ve experienced it at some point.

How would someone like that like to get fucked, Sonny wondered, slowly stroking himself. He’d probably know what he want. He’d goad Sonny, grab his tie. ‘I thought you were supposed to be an alpha?’ he heard Barba’s voice say in his head, as he imagined all the expensive fabric press up against his skin. ‘So far, I don’t see any evidence of that, detective’.

Barba would get rid of his clothes and appraise him before he’d let Sonny undress him, Sonny thought. He imagined Barba’s fingers all over his body while he got hard in his own hand, Barba’s green eyes looking him up and down, like he saw and recorded every little flaw and blemish. This was Sonny’s fantasy, though, so obviously, Barba would eventually approve, push him to sit down on the couch and climb on his lap. Sonny knew that Barba’s aftershave smelled great, expensive and spicy, but getting in so close, he would be able to smell Barba’s own scent through it. He wanted to bury his nose against his neck, dig his fingers into the soft cheeks of his ass and sink into him while Barba smirked at him.

Yeah, that stupid smirk, that little quirk of his lips, it made Sonny crazy. He could never figure out if he was being made fun off or looked down on or if Barba might’ve even seen something he liked (okay, that last one was probably wishful thinking). He squeezed himself, imagining that the tight clench was Barba’s body around him, then sped up his strokes. He would kiss that smirk away. Barba’s lips looked so soft and he probably knew just what to do with his tongue.

It was when he twisted his thumb over the head of his cock and thought of burying himself deep in him that Barba’s smirk fell away. He saw Barba open-mouthed, with red cheeks and looking at Sonny while he rode him, his fingers tightening around his shoulders, and his thighs quivering just a little.

Sonny heard him saying orders in his head – ‘faster, what are you waiting for’ – but it was a little bit more needy and Barba would only be able to whisper them while his breath picked up. Then, Sonny would grab him around the waist and put him on his back. He could feel arousal curl tight in his stomach as he imagined the sweet abandon on Barba’s face and the way his legs would be around Sonny’s hips, his hands drawing him nearer. Now it wasn’t commands in his thoughts anymore, it was just ‘yes, Sonny, just like that’ as Sonny ploughed into him, imitating some shadow of the act with his hand, desperately fast, his heart racing as, in his mind, he saw Barba splayed out under him and heard him gasping his name in pleasure.

He came thinking about biting a mark into Barba’s neck while Barba whimpered in approval, his hands spread broadly over Sonny’s back, his legs still tight around him.

Sonny had to catch his breath afterwards. He hadn’t come this hard in a long time, certainly not from touching himself. As the endorphins ebbed away while he took care of the prosaic business of wiping his hands with a paper tissue, he felt distant shame. A.D.A. Rafael Barba begging for Sonny’s cock, happily under him – yeah, that was pretty realistic.

Still, Sonny might have returned to those images the next few nights just because of how damn well they worked. He would move them all over Barba’s office and eventually into a bed that Sonny imagined to be broad, with silk sheets and a sturdy wooden frame that Barba could hold on to. He thought that Barba would be bossy and seductive, but he came easiest when he thought of him willingly giving himself to Sonny and just enjoying the ride as Sonny proved how good he could be.

That alone would have been awkward enough, but Sonny soon realised that he might not get it out of his system so soon when, one night, he caught himself in a comfortable, half-asleep fantasy of Barba curled contently against his side, allowing Sonny to pet his hair and exchange lazy kisses.

Imagining sex was one thing, but to add the afterglow to it, well, okay, Sonny knew where that was headed and it was nowhere good, considering Barba wasn’t exactly his number one fan. Still, he couldn’t help the nervous flutter of butterflies in his stomach now when he looked at Barba striding into the SVU office like he owned it, or sitting behind his desk, gaze focused on a case spread out as papers in front of him, fingers slowly, thoughtlessly caressing a cup of coffee that Sonny might be getting irrationally jealous of.

-

Thankfully, work kept him from spending too much time mooning over a man who evidently didn’t want much to do with him. One of the Bronx detectives from the 41st precinct who’d worked the Lopez case had agreed to meet up with him the week after they had found out about Rybeck. He was a tall alpha called James Finley with a booming voice and a loud laugh, who was happy to take time out of his day to show Sonny in person where they’d found the body just so Sonny could get the picture, even though it was not a crime scene so many months after the fact. He also followed Sonny to Barba’s office to discuss matters with him, as requested by the Lieutenant, who was busy working on a new case that had come in last night.

Finley sat with his long legs stretched out in front of him in one of Barba’s leather chairs as he went through their investigation with them.

“Our main suspect was Jason King, an alpha who worked in the coffee shop with Lopez for a bit.” Though Barba leaned forward to receive the file Finley had brought, Finley didn’t seem to notice him and handed it to Sonny instead. “He was in the back, manned the dishwashers, wiped the tables after they closed up the shop in the evening and all that. Not exactly management material, if you catch my drift. He hasn’t worked there in a while, though.”

“How’d you come to think it’s him?” Sonny asked. They had had a suspect for Solman’s murder, but had already had to rule him out, so this was their only lead at the moment.

“His co-workers thought he was an odd guy. They were right, too – he lives out in Queens with his siblings in the house they inherited from their parents. Three alphas, one omega. According to the neighbours, they keep to themselves. They had all sorts of theories what was going on behind closed doors, though.”

“Neighbours always do,” Barba said, raising a brow. “Did you find anything to substantiate rumours relevant to the case?”

Finley glanced at him briefly from the corners of his eyes. “Not enough. They claimed to have been together on the night of the murder and could give pretty detailed and matching descriptions of what they had been up to.”

“They could’ve talked about it beforehand,” Sonny said.

“Of course, but we didn’t have a lot else. No DNA evidence on the corpse, no connection to drug-related crimes on the part of Jason King... There was one omega who was friends with Lopez, a customer. He said that Lopez told him King had threatened her a few days before her disappearance, but that’s all we had to go on.”

“With the new vics we got, we might have other options,” Sonny said. “We should probably talk to that omega again. You got his name somewhere?”

“Uh-huh, yeah.” Finley reached over to Sonny and dug through the file, pulling out a witness statement. “Richard F. Copeland, né Berger,” he announced, reading from the paper. “Yeah, that’s him. Good luck getting him to talk, though.”

“Berger?” Barba repeated. “Richard Frederick Berger? I think I know him. He was a corroborating witness in a domestic abuse case I brought to trial when I was still working at the Bronx D.A.’s office.” He shrugged his shoulders. “He went back and forth about half a dozen times on whether he’d appear in court.”

“Short, shy guy, right?” Finley said, really turning to Barba for the first time. “Sounds like Hitler if he ate fabric softener?”

“I believe he’s actually Swiss.”

“Well, he’s from someplace around there,” Finley said with a shrug, making a vague gesture that might imply most of Europe. “Anyway, he’s scared of everything and he’s got a husband who won’t let him say a sentence more than he needs to, so this one might be a struggle.”

Sonny nodded his head. If an omega was married to an alpha, the husband or wife could demand to be around during any and all questioning by the police. As far as Sonny knew, the rule had been put in place a long time ago so alphas could give their omegas support if they thought they needed it, but in reality, it often just made it harder for the omegas to help out. Every few years or so, there would be some talk of abolishing this law. However, the decision makers were still mostly conservative alphas who insisted on its original protective intent for omegas – even if most police officers who would care to admit it could tell them how this law was usually twisted to obstruct their work.

“If you decide to go to him, let me come,” Barba interjected. “I got the impression he’s a little less jittery around other omegas.”

“Yeah, for sure,” Sonny said, immediately. He wouldn’t wanna make the guy uncomfortable if he was as unreliable as Barba had said.

Since that was all the info the 41st had on the case, they all left the office. Barba took a turn right to bring a colleague some files, and Finley followed Sonny down the stairs, quietly lost in thought for a moment.

“It’s good you’re looking into this again. It always bothered me we couldn’t help that girl,” he said eventually, as they were one staircase down. “Of course, I’d rather it be handled by an actual A.D.A.”

Surprised, Sonny looked up at him.

“Hold up, Barba might be a hard-ass, but he makes for a good counsellor. Even if you don’t like him, he gets results.”

“I don’t think his rate is much better than that of most A.D.A.s around here,” Finley protested.

“Because he takes risky cases.” Some of which the SVU actively pushed for. “He doesn’t always play it safe. That’s good, though, right? Means he isn’t just sitting it out until he can get the next promotion.”

“How many next promotions are there going to be for someone like him, really? This is as good as it gets and we can guess how he got even this far.”

Maybe he was being an idiot, but it only dawned on Sonny then that _that_ was what they were talking about. Around the other cops in SVU, Barba being an omega just didn’t really come up much. Mostly, they griped about his attitude or the way he put his foot down not going after some of their hunches, and yeah, there were always these couple days in the middle of the month that he went MIA, but you got used to that, too.

So even though Sonny spent a really inappropriate amount of time imagining the sexual aspects of Barba’s nature lately, no, he didn’t really think of him as ‘that omega I work with’. It wasn’t as important as all the other things that Barba also was and did and said, and so sometimes he’d forget that there were people like Finley; people who didn’t see Barba as infuriating, passionate, sarcastic, ambitious, calculating and deep down a good person, or hell, even just as an asshole, but went as far as _omega_ and then stopped and never looked to find out more about him.

“You don’t like him ‘cause he’s an omega.”

“Listen, you need to be realistic, Carisi. He got this position one of two ways – they always do, when they got jobs like this.” Finley folded his arms in front of his chest. “Either he’s been hired to make the D.A. look progressive, or he screwed him or someone else high enough up the food chain. Maybe both. That’s why omegas ten times out of ten suck at jobs like this. Although, to be fair, I bet they get good at sucking…” A low chuckle escaped him.

Sonny didn’t really think about what he did next. One moment he was standing beside Finley on a landing, and the next he had him up against the wall, both hands wrapped tight around the lapels of his shirt.

“You don’t talk about Barba like that!”

“Oh – hey! What?!” His mouth half-open, Finley stared at him. “The hell is your problem?! You wanna fuck that old omega, too? I’d have thought you had better taste.”

For just half a second, the comment gave Sonny pause, but he shook it off. No, that wasn’t about this. He wouldn’t have let anyone speak that way about any of his colleagues who were all the kind of people who put their time and sometimes lives on the line to help others. There was no excuse for that.

“You’ve got no idea the things Barba has accomplished! He’s a damn good A.D.A., who cares if he’s an omega?”

Finley grabbed his wrists and tried to push back, but Sonny kept him pinned. They struggled for a moment until a sharp, well-known voice suddenly cut through the air.

“Gentlemen, is this really the right place for combat exercises? I thought you were going to work on that case.”

Like a disapproving elementary school teacher, Barba looked down on them from his position a few steps up the stairs, still holding the papers he had wanted to bring his colleague.

Sonny and Finley broke apart and before Sonny could explain, Finley threw him a dirty look and hurried down the steps, not before bumping into him hard with his shoulder. Sonny remained, trying to catch his breath.

“Alphas – so emotional. You really can’t have them working in the field of law,” Barba said, voice dripping with sarcasm. It was a truism he would have heard a lot, except, of course, not levelled against alphas, but rather himself.

Sonny thought he could feel his ears growing pink.

“Counsellor, he said…”

“I heard what he said, Carisi. I remembered A.D.A. Cox switched offices recently and was walking only a little behind the two you.”

Sonny tried to find signs of agitation in Barba’s face, but it was blank, as was his voice.

“Doesn’t that piss you off?”

“I’m not _thrilled_ by it, but you, Carisi, cannot get into a fist-fight with everyone who would say things like that when they think they’ve got a sympathetic audience. You’d have to beat up most of your own colleagues, for starters, excepting the SVU, and a sizeable chunk of mine. Also, a lot of random people in the streets.”

Barba was right and Sonny didn’t like it. He unclenched his fists.

“You get this a lot, huh?”

Barba shrugged his shoulders, although Sonny thought he seemed a bit too tense to do complete nonchalance right.

“Concentrate on the case, Carisi. I can hold my own.”

“I know you can. But it’s not right.”

“No, but people always talk. They say Tutuola has no ambition and slacks off on the job, that Rollins uses the NYPD as her dating pool, and that Benson isn’t fit to be Noah’s mother because an alpha is not nurturing enough to raise a baby. I’m sure they have something ill-informed and offensive to say behind your back, too. There is no need to get into valiant battles on _my_ behalf – not with your fists. I won’t go so far as to ask you not to comment when your colleagues reveal themselves to be small-minded morons, you should. Still, I have heard much worse.” 

Barba, too, left him standing, continuing on his way downstairs. Before he followed, Sonny fixed his jacket and took a deep breath, running a hand over his hair. It seemed like he wasn’t ever able to behave like an actually competent police officer in front of Barba. However, as he watched him leave, he saw Barba quickly glancing over his shoulder once more and Sonny found himself thinking that he looked more curious than annoyed.


	4. Chapter 4

When they drove to the South Bronx to visit Richard F. Copeland, Rafael sat in the back of the cop car. From his spot, he found himself looking at Carisi’s blond head bowed over his preparation for the interview and thinking back to the conversation in his office last Friday, as he had done too many times over the weekend. That Officer Finley had not been happy with an omega on the case, Rafael had been able to tell from the start, just from the way he bypassed him in conversation in favour of the other alpha in the room. It was one of those habits of a certain subsets of alphas that Rafael was so used to he recognised it in seconds. Apparently, it had been more of a shock to Carisi, considering he had found the two policemen wrestling on the staircase of 1 Hogan Place afterwards.

It did not surprise Rafael at all that Carisi was impulsive enough to get into physical fights with colleagues, but what had taken him aback was that Carisi had seemed genuinely, righteously angry about Finley’s behaviour. Had he noticed Rafael was close behind them and played up his fury to get into his good graces? But Rafael really thought that whatever bad traits he had (they were numerous), Carisi was not a manipulator on that level. There was no reasonable explanation but the deceptively easy one that Carisi had wanted to defend Rafael’s honour because he thought it was the right thing to do; and as little as Rafael needed a white knight, he vastly preferred a cop who got furious at his fellow officers for spewing discrimination of any kind than one who let it wash over him without comment.

However, this assessment didn’t go at all with the fact that Carisi _did_ still act like a puppy asking for pets around him. Barba had chalked it up to the fact that, like so many, Carisi probably thought laying a high-powered omega was an especially interesting notch in his bedpost, but if he had real respect for Rafael and his work, then that was unlikely.

Rafael averted his gaze and watched the street pass by to avoid giving himself away by staring. He couldn’t figure Carisi out anymore – _Carisi_ , of all people, who seemed at first, second and third glance like an open book. It bothered him more than he cared to admit.

The house they stopped at was an orange-and-brown brick apartment building darkened by exhaust fumes. Little iron balconies looked out over the street. It could have been a nice touch, but most of the plants, judging by their greyish tinge and drooping leaves, did not seem to take to the New York smog and perpetual shadow thrown over them by the much higher houses across the street. Combined with a few dirtied American flags and plastic folding chairs residing between cracked terracotta pots, the balconies rather ended up adding to the diffuse air of depression hanging about the street.

Richard F. Berger – now officially Richard F. Copeland – lived over a dry cleaning business on the first floor of the building. When he opened the door and spotted Liv and Carisi, Richard’s soft, brown eyes widened a little bit like those of a particularly puzzled deer in the headlights, even though Carisi had told Rafael he’d phoned ahead.

“Hello,” he said, quietly. “Er, please, come in.”

He shook each of their hands as they entered and brightened a little as he spotted Rafael. His fingers were cold and damp as Rafael squeezed them.

“It’s nice to see you again,” Richard said, picking his words carefully, obviously still not quite comfortable with the language, enunciating the words too hard around the edges with his German accent. “Ah, you know, not the circumstances. It’s really sad, that about Angela.”

“Hey,” a voice said behind Richard before Rafael could answer.

He looked up to see a man who towered over both Rafael and the even shorter Richard, glowering at him under bushy, blond eyebrows, his mouth hidden under a bristly beard. That would be the original Copeland, Rafael guessed, Richard’s husband.

“You’re that A.D.A.,” Copeland said. It sounded like an accusation.

“You must’ve heard of me,” Rafael answered, with a brash smile, making sure not to break eye contact as he offered him his hand as well. “Rafael Barba.”

“Mr. Barba is very interested in this case, so he asked to be part of the interview,” Liv added, while the alpha took Rafael’s hand and gave breaking all his bones in one go his best try as he wrung it like a washcloth. Rafael gritted his teeth and showed no pain.

“Yeah, okay, but I’m gonna be in the room. That’s my right,” Copeland snapped. He made it sound like Liv had already tried to order him out.

“Of course. Can we sit down somewhere?”

They all moved into a small living room. The couch was scuffed and the carpet so worn there was white showing between the blue threads, but it was very tidy, except for a half-empty bottle of beer on the table. A cat curled on a blanket. When Carisi sat down, Rafael noticed him getting momentarily distracted by it, reaching over to pet it between the ears and smiling.

“Uh, I’m not sure what to say,” Richard explained, hastily.

“Yeah, he told the other clowns everything he knew.”

Copeland had positioned himself behind Richard, his hands to the left and right of his slim shoulders on the backrest of the couch.

“Just talk to the detectives again, Richard,” Rafael said mildly, feeling that same mix of pity and annoyance that he had gotten used to when dealing with the timid man before – with all omegas of his ilk, really, which was a disappointing lot of them. Rafael knew they couldn’t be blamed for doing what society told them was the right way to act, but it seemed so counterintuitive to him that anyone could so ardently refuse to attempt to grow even a little bit of a backbone, for self-protection if nothing else.

“What if I don’t say it exactly like last time? Because it was, that was a while ago.”

“Nah, don’t worry, we know you’re just human,” Carisi said, with his dimpled smile.

“We’re not here to make it a test,” Liv supplied. “We just want the best chance we can get to solve Angela Lopez’s murder.”

Slowly, and only after a quick glance at Rafael, Richard nodded his head, his hands tightly clasped in his lap as Carisi began going through the regular list of questions as to his relationship with the victim. Rafael stepped a little closer towards him and noticed, as he did so, that Copeland was tracking him, and even shifting away from his ridiculous guard dog position a bit to better keep an eye on him.

The fact that Copeland didn’t seem to trust him in his home gave Rafael an idea. With a quick glance at Richard, he made sure that he hadn’t yet collapsed under the pressure of withstanding questions from two stranger alphas. Then he turned and wandered out through the open balcony door, positioning himself so that part of him was obscured to the people looking outside from the living room by a big, milky-leaved silverberry.

Just as he’d expected, the fact that the rogue element was out of his view lured the alpha Copeland. Rafael had originally come here to hold Richard’s hand, but Liv and Carisi were hardly insensitive enough to do a bad cop-worse cop routine on this wisp of a human being, so getting his handler out of the room seemed more useful to Rafael right now.

“What are you doing here?” Copeland snapped.

“I just wanted to get a bit of fresh air. I have questions for your husband later,” Rafael said. “But since you’re here, Mr. Copeland, I’d like to ask: Do we have a problem?”

Not that he actually needed that question answered, but since he wanted to keep him around, he would have to start a conversation.

“Damn right we do,” Copeland said, seeming proud of the fact.

“Why is that?” Rafael pushed with an unfaltering, self-confident smile. “I don’t think we’ve met before.”

“Well, Rich told me all about that case you dragged him into.”

“I didn’t drag him into anything, Mr. Copeland. He was a witness.”

“Yeah, to an alpha disciplining his omega. That’s no one’s business.”

Rafael tried not to show his displeasure, although he wasn’t sure he’d succeeded in keeping a flash of hostility out of his eyes. The law that allowed an omega to press charges against an alpha who had been their mate during the time of an attack was barely ten years old (and it did not even apply when they were married). Most juries still shared Copeland’s view on the matter, which was why a slap on the wrist in the form of a fine was usually the best you could hope for as an attorney. In the case Richard had been a witness to, they had actually managed to get jail time, although the omega had had to end up temporarily in a wheelchair for that to happen and Rafael remembered it still had been an uphill battle with a 90 degree ascent. Of course, one had to be happy for every time an omega even decided to press charges at all.

“The omega went to the police. Obviously he didn’t agree with his former mate’s methods,” Rafael said, simply.

“Rich won’t be getting involved in anything like that again. It’s not his place to decide. It was no one’s but that alpha’s.”

“Your husband has a very keen sense of justice,” if he didn’t let it get overwhelmed by his cowardice, “I don’t see why you would obstruct that. You could be proud of him.”

“For what? He’s not supposed to get in trouble. What does _your_ mate say about you doing this job?”

“That’s not important. I’m the one who does it,” Rafael said. It was his standard answer to the question.

Copeland stared at him, then shrugged his shoulders.

“I’m guessing you don’t have one. Figures. You could stand to be taught a few lessons yourself.”

And as if to underline his words, Copeland grabbed Rafael by the arm, giving him a firm shake that almost send Rafael tumbling forward into a few ailing tomato plants, hadn’t Copeland still been holding on to his biceps.

“Let go of me,” Rafael said, icily.

“Or what?”

There was something new in Copeland’s expression, mixing in with the distaste from before. He was enjoying this. Rafael might have waltzed in here in a suit and with cops flanking him left and right, but now Copeland had the power in his home again and the omega was squirming in his grasp. Rafael wanted to punch him in the face, but he had never been of much use in a brawl, so he knew better than to try it.

“Let go right now.”

Rafael made sure to turn his volume up just a little; it was not yet a shout, but it would be enough to get the attention of the people in the living room.

“Do you think it’s smart to attack an A.D.A.?” he added.

“If I were attacking you, you’d know, omega.”

“My name is Rafael Barba. You will hear that name a lot more often if you don’t let go of me right this instant.”

Scared submission had never been one of Rafael’s talents, even when he’d known that it might have been the smarter choice. Omega or not, he didn’t have it in him just to cower and hope trouble would pass; his instinct was to stand his ground.

“What’s going on out here?”

Liv had made it to the open door of the balcony and leaned out, her mouth set in a hard line.

The alpha in uniform evidently made the difference to Copeland. He held Rafael’s gaze for a moment longer and, with a derisive snort, gave Rafael a hard push against the shoulder before he let go, which sent Rafael stumbling into the low, rusty railing of the balcony.

Rafael felt the exact moment as his weight went over the tipping point and the world tilted, ground vanishing under his feet. He groped at air. Liv was calling out. There was a rush of colour in front of his eyes, and wind in his ears, and he managed to turn himself sideways just a little before he hit the pavement like a sack of rice, his full weight coming down on his right arm. Rafael heard a sound like a wooden baseball bat snapping in two.

Dazed, Rafael looked at the dirty cobblestone in front of him before he rolled off his arm and peeled back the sleeve. There was a bend a few inches upwards from the wrist, a slight curve that would have made the limb look like rubber if it hadn’t been for the very sharp piece of broken bone poking, red-stained, out of his flesh.

The spike of pain came with a delay. When it did, it was fast like a fire roaring through him. He wanted to scream, but didn’t have the air, so he only curled inward, around the arm that lay useless and limp in front of him. Breathing hard through his nose, he tried to sit up, but he could only get halfway there, leaning on his good arm, before the pain pulsing through his body forced him to stop. He tried three, four times to no avail.

Two hands caught his shoulders and held him in that precarious position between kneeling and falling face-first back on the sideway. “Wow, hey, Counsellor, it’s okay, I got you.”

Rafael thought that, instinctively, the last thing he should have wanted to hear when he was in this much pain was that broad Staten Island drawl, but in the moment he just felt a flood of relief that he wasn’t left to struggle alone on the ground like a wounded stray. His vision swam as he looked up at Carisi. The agony drove tears into his eyes.

“Did you hit your head? Can you move everything? You gotta be careful, you might’ve injured your back.”

“My arm,” he just managed.

Carisi pulled him up a little straighter and sucked in air through his teeth when he saw the way Rafael’s right arm dangled from his side, hand leaning on the ground, the broken bone jutting out like a stick, a sight which was now beginning to make Rafael sick. He looked up instead at the sky and Carisi’s face.

“Shit, oh – okay.”

Carisi swallowed visibly.

“Carisi, what’s going on down there?! Barba!”

It occurred to Barba he might’ve heard Liv calling his name before, but the pain had confused him too much to relate the sound to himself. Tilting his head, he saw her standing up on the balcony, both hands wrapped around the railing. Through the veil of tears that returned though he blinked them away again and again, he couldn’t make out her face.

“I’m fine,” he croaked. “It’s just my arm.”

Which didn’t feel like very little right now when his bone was outside his body, but he hadn’t cracked his spine or his head.

“Are you gonna be okay up there, Liv? He’s got a nasty fracture, it’s bleeding pretty bad. He’s gonna need to go to the hospital.”

Was it? Rafael had been so occupied with the pain that he hadn’t noticed the red puddle that was currently forming under his curled fingers.

“I already called in reinforcements from the area.” Liv glanced over her shoulder into the living room. “Copeland is behaving now, but I’d rather not take him one on one.”

“Yeah, seems smart. You want me to come up?”

As he spoke, Carisi’s hands tightened around Rafael’s shoulders. He was still holding him up and Rafael realised he was leaning into Carisi because his own body was mostly concerned with the molten lava that the flesh of his arm seemed to have turned into.

“No, but keep an eye on the door, just in case he tries to run. Barba, we can drive you to the hospital faster than an ambulance if you wait for a couple minutes.”

“If you need Carisi up there, I suspect that if you just put me in a taxi, I probably wouldn’t get lost on the way,” Rafael said, making an effort to keep the tremor out of his voice. The pain was still excruciating, but the shock was beginning to wear off and thinking of Copeland being interrogated by a few angry police officers was a pleasant idea. It helped Rafael push away the thought how damn _high_ that first floor actually was, and how easily he could’ve landed head-first, too. He would rather be angry than scared.

“What?!” Carisi exclaimed. “You got bones sticking out of you! I’m not putting you alone in a taxi!”

There was a bit of a growl in the timbre of Carisi’s voice, that familiar sound of an alpha with raised hackles.

“Down, boy,” Rafael muttered.

Carisi lowered his blue-eyed gaze, the defiant look quickly melting away as he noticed he had stumbled past his boundaries once again. It was replaced by a sheepish smile. Rafael raised a brow at him and wished he could have been more caustic, but a part of him was admittedly grateful to have sympathetic company, so the look was all he got in terms of rebuke.

“Carisi has a point,” Liv said mildly. “Hang in there, Barba, alright?”

Rafael nodded his head, mainly because he was in such an amount of pain that the possibility that he might fall unconscious was a very real one, so having someone with him was not altogether the worst idea. Besides, even as the lone wolf that he was, he didn’t think anyone wanted to bleed out all on their own in the back of a New York taxi. It seemed like an exceedingly sad way to go.

“How are you feeling?” Carisi asked.

“Dizzy.”

Also, he didn’t like the people that were now coming to rubberneck, clearly interested in the cause for the spots of blood on the ground, the cop kneeling by someone on the sidewalk – a little daytime drama playing out for everyone to see.

“Yeah, you look pale as a wall. You should lie down, put your feet up and get the blood flowing into your head again.”

“I’m not going to lie down on the ground in public,” Rafael said, glowering at him.

“You wanna collapse on the ground in public, Counsellor?”

As Liv had put it, Carisi had a point.

“Where do I put my feet up here?” he relented.

“I’ll help you, wait.”

When Carisi lowered him back to the ground, Rafael thought he might black out with the pain of moving his arm. Somewhere close to his ear, Carisi was saying something no doubt tiresomely optimistic, but all he caught was the soothing tone of it. An animal part inside him, stirred up by the raw hurt, chained to the nature he so rarely wanted to think about it, perked up at that in combination with Carisi’s gentle hands carefully depositing him back on the pavement.

Once the black flames stopped licking at the edges of his vision, he noticed his head being lifted so Carisi could push his bunched-up jacket under it. Then he pulled Rafael’s feet into his lap.

“At least we’re giving a good show,” Rafael muttered, glancing past Carisi at the spectators who had accumulated at the corner of the street, deliberating how close they could get without making themselves part of the trouble.

“Idiots,” Carisi muttered, glancing over his shoulder. “They could at least ask if they could help.”

“The bystander effect is a powerful thing.”

With Carisi’s jacket right under his head, it was impossible not to notice Carisi’s scent. It was just a little pleasant in its familiarity. Rafael tried to keep himself from turning his head and burying his nose in the cloth.

“I’d put something on your wound to stop the bleeding, but with the bone showing like that…”

“Leaving it alone seems like a good idea,” Rafael was quick to assure. The last thing he wanted was anyone’s hand pushing around on that bit of bone.

Rafael didn’t know how long it took until the other officers came, only that the sky, which was a mass of swirling grey above them, had started gifting them with a steady stream of drizzle by that point. Carisi carefully pushed off Rafael’s legs and greeted them, directing the two officers up the stairs, then hurried back to Rafael’s side and leaned down.

“Okay, Counsellor, you did it. Time to get you to the hospital.”

Rafael tried to sit up, but the pain that shot up his arm was too much, and he sank back with a groan.

“Easy,” Carisi said, looking too scared to be very reassuring. “Uh, alright, I got an idea. Can you put your good arm around my neck and hold on?”

Rafael did, wrapping it as tightly as he could. Carisi pushed his hand under his back, then took hold of Rafael’s bleeding arm to stabilise it, or possibly to make Rafael pass out after all; the pain was unreal, but at least it made him reflexively cling tighter to Carisi for a moment of shock, and Carisi used that to hoist Rafael up onto his feet. Rafael gasped for air.

“Just a few steps to the car,” Carisi said softly and Rafael nodded his head. He reached over to take hold of his own mangled arm and, with Carisi’s hand hovering nervously close to his waist in case he should fall, managed to stumble towards the police car.

Carisi opened the backseat door for him and leaned over to put on his seatbelt before he slammed the door and flew into the driver’s seat. The first thing he did was activate the sirens.

It was a mercifully short drive to Lincoln Hospital and at the speed Carisi tackled it, Rafael appreciated him concentrating on the traffic. He did look over his shoulder whenever there was a red light he couldn’t safely run, probably checking to see if Rafael had fallen unconscious yet, and always visibly relieved to see him still sitting there with his eyes open.

The good thing about a bone sticking out of one’s body, Rafael found, was that even in a New York ER, that gathered you some points for its visceral nature. Being followed by a detective with a badge visibly pinned to his suit jacket probably helped, too. As soon as Carisi had escorted him inside, a nurse went to get a doctor.

“We’ve got to make sure the wound doesn’t get infected,” said doctor explained, after she had sat Rafael down on a white chair. Carisi had followed them and she looked up briefly from her examination to regard him with mild curiosity. “Are you his alpha, Officer?”

“Oh, uh, no, no” Carisi said, eloquently. “No, just a colleague.”

“That’s too bad. This is going to be quite painful,” the doctor said. “You’re an omega, correct, Mr. Barba?”

As close as she stood, she would have smelled the answer to her question already.

“Yes. Though I’m sure I will live if you do your job,” Rafael said, only turning down the acidity in his voice because this woman was about to play with his bones.

“I hope so!” She laughed. “But you’ll have to get surgery and I’d rather have someone around for an Omega waking up from anaesthesia. Many of you get so anxious.”

In the interest of preserving her professional goodwill, Rafael swallowed the question whether in her head, the word ‘omega’ was equivalent to ’10-year-old’.

“I wanted to stay around, anyway,” Carisi chimed in, throwing Rafael a smile.

“This is going to take hours, Carisi,” Rafael answered. “And I don’t need a chaperone. I’ll be fine.”

“Actually, you’re lucky. We do have a few open slots for surgery right now. It’s been quiet today. Still, depending on how long the anaesthesia keeps Mr. Barba under, it could be a long evening, Officer.”

Carisi shrugged. “I got reading for class I can do.”

The exhaustion overwhelmed Rafael’s desire to argue. If Carisi was that eager to spend his free time on him, why not let him? Sitting here with a forearm bent like a cartoon character’s in his bloodstained suit, he had more important things to worry about.

“Seeing as I’ll be unconscious, do whatever you want. I won’t be able to stop you.”

Efficiently, the doctor ushered him towards a bed while she gave Carisi directions to a waiting room. Rafael was helped out of his clothes and issued one of the standard plastic dresses, and soon wheeled into surgery. The anaesthetists were chatting about the food in the canteen as they administered the drugs; Rafael slipped away listening to a conversation about sub-par stew.

-

Rafael came to slowly, pulling himself out of a sticky, dreamless depth. His eyes wouldn’t stay open and when he’d finally managed that, they wouldn’t focus. It was very white around him. The smell of disinfectant finally gave away where he was. Mixed in with that somewhat nauseating scent was another one, more well-known, and instinctively more welcome. Rafael didn’t have to see Carisi to know he was there.

“Do they allow non-relatives here?” he asked, drowsily.

“The doctor said I should wait here for you to wake up.”

Carisi sat on a rickety chair, one finger clamped between the pages of a book. _Criminal Law and Its Processes: Cases and Materials_ , Rafael read, as he turned his head to frown at him.

“I’m not allowed to _sleep_ on my own? How does that woman think omegas get through a day?” He sighed. “If I were as frail as she thinks I should be, I’d probably faint twice before breakfast.”

Chuckling, Carisi pulled an old, crumpled receipt out of the back of the book and pushed it between the pages as a bookmark to free his hand.

“I know, she’s pretty old-fashioned. She’s just looking out for you, though. Plus, I don’t mind.”

“I do,” Rafael said, glancing downwards. His whole brain felt like it had been enveloped in a cocoon of wool, which was probably also why he didn’t notice any pain from his arm anymore. “Did everything work out or do I have to say goodbye to that hand?”

Moving the blanket, he found that his arm had already been put in a cast going hard up to the elbow, but not restricting its movement.

“They said everything’s fine. The doctor’s gonna tell you more. I mean, it did look – really bad.” Carisi’s gaze wavered for a moment, quickly darting to the cast before it returned to Rafael’s face. He hesitated, then added: “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Not making sure you were safe.”

For a moment, Rafael tried to trace what steps could have led to the genuine contrition currently ruling over Carisi’s expression.

“I was the one who went outside with Copeland, you didn’t send me. I’m not _your_ omega, Carisi, you are not responsible for my safety any more than you are for that of any other random person on the street.”

“That’s the thing, though, I kinda _am_ responsible for everyone. I’m a police officer, after all. And it’s pretty bad you could get hurt like that with two cops sitting not ten feet away.”

The explanation seemed honest enough that Rafael could reign in his bruised ego. Though in the moment the pain had taken precedence, in retrospect, being manhandled to the hospital by Carisi was not ideal. It was imperative for Rafael not to be seen as vulnerable if he wanted to be taken serious at all, much more so than it would have been for an alpha or beta.

However, Carisi seemed to have lost more respect for himself than Rafael. At least he’d made no attempt at lecturing Rafael yet.

“We’ll have to see how to split the guilt between your and Liv’s incompetence and my recklessness,” Rafael said flatly. “Accidents happen. I think even Copeland was surprised his balustrade was that low. At least that’s what he’ll say in court.”

And honestly, as little faith as he had in the man’s intelligence or pacifism, he was probably not stupid enough to attempt to kill an A.D.A. right in front of a detective.

With a slow nod of his head, Carisi leaned closer towards him.

“You definitely have a negligence claim, maybe even assault? The Lieu told me on the phone that he pushed you,” he said, animated.

“Are you going to be my lawyer, Carisi?” Rafael raised a brow at him.

“I mean, you do got an NYPD lieutenant as your main eye witness. I know you don’t think much of me, but I could probably swing that.”

Carisi grinned his bright grin and against his will, Rafael smiled.

“I suppose you might manage a case with training wheels on,” he allowed, benevolently.

“That was almost a compliment,” Carisi noted.

“Consider it your repayment for wasting your time here on behalf of a doctor with medical opinions from the 19th century. How long did you have to wait?”

“Eh, not long at all, considering.” Carisi waved with his book to the left, where a clock showed that it was half past six. “It’s only been like, what, three hours since they put you under? You woke up pretty soon.”

“Still…”

Rafael would have added something, but the doctor rushed into the room with her white coat and grey hair billowing behind her, welcoming him back to the land of the living. In her professional hurry, she explained to him that the cast would probably have to stay on for about eight weeks and that he was free to leave today when he felt well enough. She told him the nurses had given his clothes to Carisi, a remark that was followed by a look in the direction of the alpha, who was calling Liv about Rafael’s recovery outside the open door to the hall.

“He’s very protective for a colleague,” she said, voice lowered, with a conspiratorial twinkle in her eyes.

“One of his many flaws,” Rafael answered.

-

Carisi took him home that evening in the police car; by eight o’clock next morning, Rafael was back at work, his cast bulging out the grey sleeve of his suit just a little, and emerging around his hand wrapped in a light shade of baby blue bandages that Rafael had matched with the dot pattern on his tie.

Carmen looked up from her computer screen, her gaze scanning him discreetly. She was a beta; originally, Rafael had wanted to hire an omega, just to give someone like himself an opportunity, but her competence and resolute charm, the kind that could compliment most any unwanted guest out the door, had convinced him during the job interview. People around the office liked to joke about the fact that technically, she would have to be in charge, but Rafael had no intention of swapping out a good employee out of pride, and if Carmen thought it was demeaning to work for an omega, she hid it very well.

“Mr. Barba, how are you? I heard you had an accident.”

“An altercation, more like.” He stopped in front of her desk. “I’m sorry, I forgot to call and tell you I wouldn’t be in anymore.”

“That’s okay, Detective Carisi took care of that,” Carmen said.

With a nod, Rafael stored that information away. It wasn’t news to him that Carisi had bouts of competence, just an odd thought that he’d been the one waiting for Rafael to wake up and taking care of all his business in the meantime, from informing his secretary to keeping an eye on his clothes.

“I don’t have any appointments this morning, do I?”

“Actually, the D.A. has asked me to tell you to drop by his office whenever you came in.”

Rafael made a quiet humming noise. “Well, that can only be good news. I better get it over with quickly.”

He placed his briefcase down in his office, stalling a little by considering the paperwork he had left unfinished on his desk when he went to go to Copeland with the police. With everything that had happened between then and now, it did not feel like he’d been here less than twenty-four hours ago. He wondered if he would be here at all in another twenty-four hours’ time.

No, the D.A. probably wouldn’t throw him out, Rafael thought, as he climbed the stairs to the floor the D.A.’s office was located on. The man had inherited Rafael from his predecessor, but he wasn’t hostile towards him and having a fairly high-profile omega working cases did give the Manhattan D.A.’s office an air of progressiveness that Rafael was sure he enjoyed. Still, Rafael was acutely aware that every mistake, even every irregularity such as this gave him a push on that knife’s edge he was standing on. It would only take one bad day to take Rafael, in the public eye, from an asset that showed socially forward thinking to a liability that would make the D.A. look like a bleeding heart hippie who’d rather sacrifice cases than fire the incompetent omega.

The D.A.’s secretary smiled at him as Rafael approached.

“Good morning, Mr. Barba. How are you feeling? We heard about yesterday – just awful.”

Rafael nodded his head in curt agreement. That was one way to put it.

“Good morning. Carmen told me Mr. McConnell wanted to see me?”

“Yes, you can head right in.”

“Thank you.”

Rafael knocked and, before he entered, briefly practiced his smile on the door. The best way to play this was to appear as undaunted as possible. Sometimes, it felt like most of his life was spent around wary dogs. If he let them smell fear, he was done for.

McConnell sat behind his desk. He was a tall, haggard Alpha with gentle eyes, heaved into his position by a talent for winning people over and organising them into functioning units, but not suited for the real combat that went on a few steps further down the political road.

“Good morning, Mr. McConnell.”

“Barba! Lieutenant Benson informed us about what happened. Horrible, the things some people think they’ll get away with. We’ll assist you with the lawsuit, of course.” He eyed Rafael’s hand in the cast. “How long do you have to wear that?”

“I should have my arm back in six weeks or so,” Rafael said, liberally shaving a little time off the doctor’s estimate.

“Is it alright for you to be at work? If you’d want some time off, I’m sure everyone would understand. It’s quite traumatic, after all, especially considering your nature.”

Perhaps the reason Rafael vaguely liked McConnell at the same time that the man annoyed him was that he always reminded him a little of his paternal grandfather. He was a master of that same breed of well-meant condescension. When Rafael had told his family that he’d gotten a scholarship to study at Harvard, his grandfather had told his sceptical wife: ‘Well, just let the boy go, then, if someone’s paying for it, there’s no harm in it.’ It had made it sound like Rafael had picked up knitting and gotten someone to pay for the wool; not that he’d ever make something worth selling, but he’d be happy and occupied and not wasting his own money, so why not? At least he’d not tried to forbid it or told Rafael flat-out that alphas didn’t marry omegas who were too ambitious for their own good, though. Others had not been so tactful.

“No other part of me than my arm is particularly traumatised. Not that I enjoyed the experience, but those are the kinds of people we can expect to meet with our jobs.”

“Well, that’s exactly it, isn’t it?” McConnell shook his head, took off his gold-rimmed glasses. “I don’t know what Lieutenant Benson was thinking, taking you along.”

“I knew the witness.”

“Still, it’s dangerous. It all is.”

With his hand, McConnell indicated the chair in front of his desk and Rafael took a seat, keeping his back very straight.

“See, Barba, I know you have been working with the SVU for a while, but I always thought you would do very well in Major Economic Crimes or the Tax Crimes Unit. You aren’t afraid to stand up to the kind of alphas that populate major big businesses and banks and you have an analytic mind that wouldn’t balk at the numbers.”

“I’m more interested in working with cases involving people, not companies,” Rafael was quick to interject.

“There is also the Public Assistance Fraud Unit.”

It wasn’t the first time that McConnell had hinted to Rafael about all the safe, cosy little white collar units, but it had never been put so bluntly before. Rafael wondered if he was about to find himself reassigned against his will.

“I’m happy you think so highly of me, but I like my current position and I have a good rapport with the Manhattan SVU.”

“Too good, considering the things they allow.” Again, McConnell shook his head, obviously despairing slightly. He gave Rafael a look of fatherly concern. “I want you to think about it, Barba. For your own safety.”

“I will, but I doubt I’ll change my mind.”

“Obviously you will want to step back from this specific case, though,” McConnell said.

Rafael bit his tongue. That was something he had thought about as well and it had been a niggling concern in the back of his head all night. If he quit the case, it would look like he was running, but he might also be a genuine liability.

“I might have to if I get legally involved with Richard Copeland’s husband,” he admitted. “He seems like the sort of person who would stop his mate from going on the stand out of spite. However, whether I’m still on the case or not probably won’t make much of a difference to him. I really don’t think he’s discriminating enough not to blame the justice system as a whole and he already didn’t want his husband to be involved.”

“That’s one concern, but I was thinking more about your safety. We’ve already been contacted by two newspapers who have heard about the incident. If people find out you’re still on that case, they’ll – rightfully – question whether we do enough to keep our employees safe. People will scrutinise this situation more than others, since you are an omega.”

So this was what it was about. McConnell wanted to make sure the D.A.’s office didn’t look bad on the news. Rafael wondered how they had found out already, but then remembered the throng of onlookers. Some had probably had their phones out to record and either one of them new someone who knew someone who worked for a paper, or the videos had ended up on Youtube rightaway. Maybe it was the Bronx reinforcements who had been talking, too. Either way, the very idea of another media circus focused on him was already tiring. During the time of his career, Rafael had read enough think pieces on working omegas inspired by his person in local papers to cover every inch of the walls of his apartment with them. This incident would only be turned against every omega who dared to climb the career ladder higher than the very bottom rung, too. He could already envision all the emphatic comments which reiterated that omegas had to be kept under lock and key for their own protection. As if an alpha would have somehow been resistant to gravity when pushed over a balustrade…

“I will reassign this case to Jeremy Howe. He’s expressed interest in working with the SVU. Maybe you can help him for the time of the transfer of the case. I would like him to get to know the SVU, anyway.”

Which of course meant he wanted him to take Rafael’s job and Rafael was supposed to prime him for that position. He remained silent for a moment. No, being difficult would not help him. He would definitely have to dig his heels in, but not here. For the sake of his own reputation, McConnell wouldn’t back down on this matter.

“Sure,” Rafael said evenly. “I will be happy to assist him.”


	5. Chapter 5

“You’re off the serial killer case?”

Sonny, who’d been sitting at his desk, turned his head in surprise. Benson was standing over by the door of her office with Barba, looking baffled. A small, colourful children’s book she’d apparently been trying to wrestle into her open bag was still in her hand.

“I’m afraid so.”

Sonny saw the wheels in her head turning.

“If you’re worried about Copeland, I can assure you, he’s not getting anywhere close to you. I don’t think he’s stupid enough to come after you, anyway. Besides, you have my number. If you ever think you’re in danger and don’t want to call 911…”

“That’s not it,” Barba interrupted. “You know I wouldn’t let some wannabe thug scare me off a case.”

“Then what’s going on?” Sonny asked, unable to keep his mouth shut.

He figured Benson might send him an exasperated look, but she, too, was concentrated on Barba, who gave a shrug with his good arm.

“As you’ve undoubtedly seen, the press got wind of our adventure and now the D.A. is worried the conservatives are going to come down on him for not making sure his pet omega didn’t get himself in trouble,” Rafael said dryly. “Damage control includes pulling me from the case in anything but a consulting function.”

When Barba turned his head, Sonny saw something altogether new there. He’d expected anger or indignation, but instead, Barba looked tired. Absent-mindedly, his left hand touched his right arm, where the cast was hidden under the sleeve of his coat.

“Do we know your replacement?” Benson asked.

“Maybe. You might have seen his name on the news: Jeremy Howe. So far, he’s worked major crimes, homicide and counter-terrorism.” Barba turned to address the detectives at their desks. “He’s not bad at his job, but he likes to play politics. If you want my advice, make sure you don’t become his platform.”

“Ah,” Benson said, raising a brow. “That would be why he wants to jump on board of this particular case.”

“Now that we’ve got media attention, it won’t be long until they notice we’re going after a serial killer,” Sonny supplied, already put out by the fact. It never made cases easier.

“Yes, brilliant detective work, Carisi,” Barba said, without much of his usual venom.

“It’s only for this case, though, right?” Sonny asked.

Barba halted for just a fraction of a second too long.

“As far as cases go we have already been working on, yes. I will still have the pleasure of your sustained company, Carisi.”

“What about in the future?” Fin asked, lounging back in his chair.

Glancing at him, Barba hesitated again, this time more noticeably.

“The D.A. would like to see me safely parked chasing tax evaders,” he said, resentment showing in the hard lines around his mouth framing a humourless smile. “Perhaps you try to get used to Howe. If my lucks runs out, you might see more of him.”

“So you’re being punished for having been pushed off a balcony?” Rollins asked.

“Not punished, _protected_ ,” Barba answered, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Anyway, until further notice I’m still on the Weyland and the Ramirez cases, although since we’re currently just waiting for court dates to be set, we probably have no further need to discuss them right now.”

With a final nod of his head, Barba strode out of the room, all business. As he passed his table, Sonny could see the bones in his hand straining against his skin from how tightly his fingers were curled around the handle of his briefcase.

“This is not fair,” Sonny blurted out, once Barba had left. “Couldn’t we talk to the D.A., tell him it wasn’t Barba’s fault he got hurt?”

“I figure that don’t make a difference to him. He probably knows,” Fin said. “It’s all about public appearance.”

“The D.A. won’t appreciate the police meddling in his affairs and I think that Barba won’t, either,” Benson cautioned.

“Still, it’s annoying we have to switch A.D.A.s in the middle of a case for no good reason,” Rollins said, turning a pencil between her fingers.

“I agree, but our main concern is still those dead omegas. Let’s just hope that this Howe they replace Barba with knows what he’s doing,” Benson told them.

As Sonny turned back to his computer screen, where he had been checking security camera footage for an older case, he felt guilt curling in his stomach. If he’d kept an eye on Copeland, maybe all of this wouldn’t have happened at all and Barba wouldn’t be in trouble for having been attacked. Like Barba had said, accidents happened, and maybe no one was really at fault but Copeland for being so careless, but it didn’t sit right with Sonny that he’d been so close and yet unable to do anything to protect Barba.

Still, Sonny’s regrets weren’t going to fix it, proactivity was definitely key here. He wondered if Barba would think it was too forward if he dropped by sometime this week just to see if he needed help at home now that his arm was broken – doing the dishes, changing the sheets, cooking, anything. It seemed like the least he could do.

-

“Mr. Barba already briefed me on this case. If your serial killer is real, it doesn’t look good at all,” were the first words out of Howe’s mouth after he had collected them all in his office.

Howe was the kind of person Sonny used to imagine as a child when he thought ‘attorney’. His dark hair was slicked back and he wore a double-breasted pinstripe suit and a permanent smile. His office looked a lot more modern than Barba’s. The pictures on the wall were abstract art, the conference table and desk had steel legs and his couch was gleaming black leather with a glass table in front of it. He was at least five years younger than Barba, Sonny guessed, although he was already a bigger fish in the office, but considering he was an alpha, he wasn’t constantly swimming against the current, either.

“What do you mean?” Benson asked.

“He’s been active for over a year, maybe more. Can we say how far back this goes?”

“A little over a year ago is the date of the earliest death related to this case we know of, but no, not yet. We’re still going through the backlog.”

“If it’s not actually Jason King, the perp could’ve been active in other states, too,” Sonny added. “Even if it _is_ him, the corpses were all over central New York. There’s no saying that he’s never dumped one in New Jersey or Connecticut. We’ve made inquiries, but it’s difficult, since some of the vics might’ve had a history of drug abuse. Those would’ve been counted as dead junkies who took too much, maybe even by their friends and families.”

“And you’ve only just _now_ noticed this pattern of deaths?” Howe pointed at them.” If the victims were not prior to death in contact with drugs, an overdose seems like a pretty remarkable way to die to me.”

“It wasn’t really a pattern until we got the second victim. The third one was picked up by Vice in the Bronx, we didn’t know about her,” Benson noted.

“Yeah, and that kid Rybeck was actually involved with drugs, so no one thought twice about it then,” Sonny added.

“It sounds like a mess, regardless. I want this to be a priority. Find out more about this King and why they couldn’t nail him. Do you think you have enough information to bring him in?”

“You’ve seen our notes, there isn’t much to go on,” Benson said. “He’ll be in for questioning on Monday, but we’re looking at all options.”

“Names, I need names,” Howe said, pointing his index finger at them again before he sat down at his desk. “Well, still, it was good to meet you all. Lieutenant Benson, if you’d stay for a moment longer?”

After the curt dismissal, Rollins, Fin and Sonny made their way down the stairs ahead of their fearless leader to wait for her in front of the door. Once outside, Sonny breathed the cold air in deep. It was the kind of fall afternoon that painted all the steel buildings gold and allowed you to keep your coat open, but Sonny wasn’t in the mood to appreciate it.

“He’s treating us like rookies,” he complained.

“Typical in a room full of alphas,” Fin said, a lopsided smirk on his face as he looked at his alpha colleagues. “He wants to bark the loudest and thinks that’ll mean he’s in charge.”

“Hey, we were very well-behaved,” Rollins claimed. “Even though I was so close to making a grab for his damn finger.”

“Yeah, no kiddin’.” With a grin, Sonny checked his Apple watch. “I hope they don’t take too long up there, I wanted to leave at six today.”

“Date?” Rollins asked, raising a brow.

The implication, totally unintended as it was, had Sonny swallowing his tongue for a moment.

“Uh, no.”

“Okay, sure.”

“I don’t have a date! I just wanted to head over to Barba’s later.”

“If you want something from him, why not just knock at his office now? He’s probably still in,” Rollins said, pushing her hands into the pockets of her jacket.

“I don’t, really. Nothing that’s to do with work. I just wanted to drop off some stuff and see if he needs any help, since he’s got his arm in a cast. I gotta head to a store first, though.”

It was sort of on the way, and anyway, he hadn’t wanted to carry around the sweets all day. Barba probably didn’t want to eat crumbs with a spoon for a treat, even if they still tasted good, as they always did at _Cisternino’s_.

Rollins narrowed his eyes at him, but before she could hazard any guesses, Benson opened the doors of 1 Hogan Place, a thin smile on her lips as she stepped out.

“Any more info?” Fin asked.

“No.” Her brows were arched. “He just told me we might be used to taking things a little easy, since Barba, as an omega, probably didn’t push us very hard. He now wants us to focus as much as we can.”

Fin snorted and Rollins huffed a laugh as she followed Benson back to the police car. Sonny joined in. Reading people didn’t seem to be on the list of Howe’s talents.

-

At the front door of Barba’s apartment building, a neighbour had let Sonny in, so he was left ascending the staircase one floor at a time to check the names by the doors for Barba’s apartment. He would’ve felt better delivering him directly to his doorstep after the hospital visit, when he’d driven Barba home, but Barba had insisted that he was not going to have an accident between the door of the car and that to his apartment and Sonny knew Barba better than to argue at this point. Barba didn’t appreciate being coddled. On that note, it was probably best that he’d slept through the nurses in the hospital addressing Sonny as ‘Mr. Barba’s alpha’ and usually hurrying on before he could correct them, too. Wrong as he knew it was, Sonny had carried the sound of those words with him back home, though, allowing them to resonate in his head.

When Sonny rang Barba’s bell, he was holding the paper bag from _Cisternino’s_ in front of him like a shield. There was a moment’s wait, then Barba opened up the door just wide enough to see through the gap, his brows rising as he spotted Sonny. He was wearing black dress pants and a dark pullover that was a rather wide fit. Sonny imagined it was much more comfortable than tugging a suit over his cast all day. 

“Hey, counsellor,” he said.

“I don’t remember ordering any food,” Barba answered, looking him up and down.

Sonny had to grin. Barba was right, he had to look like a delivery guy, standing there with the white bag like he wanted to present the logo, _Cisternino’s_ name with stylised ivy ranking around the letters.

“I just thought I’d check in on you. My mom broke her arm just last year and I remember she had a lot of trouble with the household and stuff.”

Though the treats might betray him as someone who was hoping to get in Barba’s good graces, that bit was actually true. The confusion on Barba’s face really seemed quite strange to him. After all, he’d seen his bone jutting out of his flesh as well as sat by while Barba was recovering from a surgery just a few days ago. Who wouldn’t wanna make sure their colleague was okay after that?

“It’s just my arm,” Barba said, like he was afraid Sonny might have forgotten, even as he moved out of the way to let him in. “I didn’t break my spine. I think I can manage.”

“‘course you can always _manage_. That’s not exactly ideal, though, is it? I figured it’d be right to ask,” Sonny said, good-naturedly. He was now standing in a spacious living room with two windows flanked by bookcases that were full, yet not untidily spilling over like the one back at Sonny’s own place did. There was a TV playing the NBC news channel on mute and a glass filled with amber liquid on the couch table. All the furniture looked a little vintage, though obviously well-kept. With all the dark wood and the wine-red sofa cushions, the room felt a little sombre to Sonny. Glancing around, he spotted a series of framed photos depicting various black-and-white shots of an early Twentieth Century city at night – a stop light, a vintage car, an old cinema sign, a skyscraper all lit up –, but no family pictures, nothing that looked like Barba had taken it himself at all. Sonny had sort of figured Barba wasn’t the man to keep those in the open, though. There was, after all, nothing else personal he left out for people to see, either.

“If you are that eager to spend your Friday evening doing chores, I could use some help in the kitchen,” Barba said slowly, as he closed the door. “My dishwasher is broken and washing up is tedious with just my left.”

“Sure thing.” Sonny answered, brightening, and followed Barba into the kitchen. For a moment, he’d wondered if Barba would just compliment him out again as soon as he arrived here; he seemed suspicious around alphas who wanted to be nice to him, and now that Sonny had seen what _help_ from the D.A. looked like, he understood why Barba might fear that attempts to protect him would just become ways to snap the door of a cage shut. However, there was no line of tension in his shoulders as he walked in front of Sonny. He didn’t seem to mind him here all that much.

The kitchen had a wide marble counter which housed only a bottle of brandy and a pot of very bushy, healthy basil that looked like it had never had to let a single one of its leaves go for cooking purposes. There was also a small wooden table with two chairs fit against the wall. Sonny set the bag with pastries down on it before he turned to the sink.

“Is your arm giving you a lot of trouble?” he asked, as he pulled up the sleeves of his shirt to get to work. There were just a few dirty plates, glasses and coffee mugs, which made sense, since Barba presumably didn’t spend a lot of his time at home.

“Not more than you would expect. Of course, my pain medication doesn’t run out until tomorrow, so ask me after that,” Barba said with a pale smile. “You met Howe today, didn’t you?”

Sonny grimaced.

“Yeah.”

“You’re not a fan?”

Barba had grabbed a dry towel, but Sonny just took it from him and placed it next to the sink.

“Don’t worry, just sit, I got it. Er, Howe? Well, he seems to be working the case,” Sonny said, forcing himself to be objective despite Howe’s attitude. Even if he was a politician, it didn’t necessarily mean he’d waited for an opportunity to pounce on Barba’s position. The D.A. might just have put someone there whom he knew to be flexible (or opportunistic, but that wasn’t a complimentary thing to think, either). “So I guess we’ll see.”

“I haven’t worked with him too much in the past,” Barba said, still standing by Sonny’s side.

Sonny snorted.

“I guessed that.”

“How so?”

“He said since you’re an omega, you probably don’t push us enough, so that’s why we were supposedly slacking on the case.”

Was this gossiping? Sonny didn’t care. Barba deserved to know what people said behind his back if only to protect himself, considering how precarious his position was. And yeah, Sonny was biased, he could admit it. He set down one of a few round, rather short glasses, wondering if Barba had been drinking every evening since coming back from the hospital and whether you were supposed to do that on pain meds.

“What sage advice from my alpha colleague. I’ll take that to heart on the next cases we work together,” Barba said, flatly. “The SVU doesn’t really need sleep, right?”

Chuckling, Sonny finished up the last plate.

“Would you like something to drink?” Barba asked.

“Sure.”

“I have scotch, red wine and mineral water, in case you have to drive.”

“Scotch sounds good. I brought some stuff, too, from this little Italian bakery I found couple years ago. They make all of their pastries fresh. Got their own recipes brought over from Sicily by their grandma.”

Considering the fact that Barba liked to snack on sweet things– he’d seen him with chocolate and raisins and other treats –, Sonny didn’t think he was too far off his tastes.

“Well, I always did like a healthy dinner,” Barba said, with a shrug.

He saw Barba struggling with the cap of the scotch and resisted the urge to step over and help him, instead busying himself by drying the dishes. By squeezing the bottle between forearm and belly and twisting his fingers upwards to turn the cap, Barba managed to get the bottle open and fill Sonny’s glass, then sat down and took the bottle between his legs to close it again. Sonny tried not to get distracted by the way Barba’s soft thighs pressed tightly around it as he held the bottle in place while the screwed the cap back on.

“Take two plates,” he ordered Sonny, “we can eat in the living room.”

Sonny did and sat down next to Barba, sinking into his soft sofa cushions, careful to keep a distance between them that would leave Barba as comfortable as he seemed right now. He ripped the paper bag open so it could serve as a make-shift tray. There were cannoli covered in a thick layer of powdered sugar, zeppole made of light, fluffy, deep-fried dough and pignoli loaded with pine nuts.

“To what do I owe this? Do you have a favour to ask of me?” Barba asked, surveying Sonny’s offer.

“Nah. You’ve just had a rough week.”

Barba kept his remarkably green eyes on him for a moment. “I can’t argue with that,” he admitted.

Sonny had to laugh. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Altruism makes me suspicious.”

“I do want to get along with you,” Sonny admitted. “I feel like we’ve started on the wrong foot and that sucks. I could learn a lot from you.”

“So these are bribes, then. That sounds more reasonable to me,” Barba said, with half a smile, as he picked up a cannoli.

Sonny reached for a pastry himself, his gaze straying briefly towards the TV screen in the front as he did so. Behind a small bouquet of microphones was a familiar face.

“Hey, isn’t that Howe?”

Barba’s head snapped up as he stared at the screen. His good hand dropped the cannoli and went for his remote control instead.

“Howe was involved in that murder-suicide case with the Goldman Sachs banker who shot his family. It was all over the news a few weeks ago. Maybe that is what this is about,” Barba said, slowly. However, the apprehension in his voice betrayed that he feared something else. He switched on the volume.

“… are doing their best to find the person who committed these crimes.”

“Is there anything people in the New York City area can do to protect themselves?” asked a voice from the off.

Howe nodded his head.

“Obviously, if you have friends or family who are working, unmated omegas, you should keep a close eye on them; and if you yourself happen to be of that group, make sure you do not move around the city alone, especially at night. There is no reason to panic – so far, there were only four victims who all died with several months distance between them, and the last one has only been found recently. However, we cannot be completely sure that those truly _are_ all of the victims, so some caution is certainly reasonable.”

Sonny groaned.

“The hell is he doing?!”

Barba had put down the remote and made a grab for his phone.

“I’m hoping this wasn’t the SVU’s idea?” he asked as he turned at him, reminding Sonny of a snake baring its teeth, ready to strike at the first hint of a wrong move. The news channel had switched back to an anchor woman, who recapitulated that late this afternoon, A.D.A. Howe had made the announcement that a serial killer targeting omegas was lose in New York.

“I mean, unless Benson agreed he could go forward with informing the media when they were speaking alone – but she’d have told us,” Sonny reasoned, shaking his head.

“We’ll find out.”

While speaking, Barba had already been scrolling through his contact list. He tapped his thumb on a name and lifted the phone to his ear. Automatically, Sonny grabbed the remote and muted the TV once more, which had now moved on to the sports news.

“Mr. Howe, this is Rafael Barba. Yes, good evening. I was just watching the news…” He stopped, listening to the voice on the other end. Sonny stared at his profile, watching the crease between his eyebrows grow deeper. “Did the SVU know you were planning an interview?” He stopped, but seemed to interrupt whatever Howe was saying, raising his voice just a little bit. “It’s their investigation. I’m sure you know a media spotlight isn’t always the most helpful environment to try and find a killer in.” Another pause. “Yes, they contacted me, too, after the accident, but we both know how to field journalists, I’m sure.”

Barba sat up straighter, as if he was facing Howe across the table instead of the TV showing clips of a football game.

“Obviously keeping the population of New York safe is a concern, but I’d wager the SVU included that in their plans.” Barba pressed his lips tightly together as he listened to the answer. “Yes, I am aware you lead this case now. Still, considering it’s the incident with Copeland that drew attention to it in the first place…”

After a brief silence, Barba shook his head.

“I can assure you that Lieutenant Benson won’t be amused. She-” He was interrupted from the other end this time. “And I really wouldn’t tell her _that_ – yes. Of course. Goodbye, Mr. Howe.”

Barba dropped his phone on the sofa next to him.

“Mr. Howe is selflessly protecting the people of New York from harm – while making sure his name will be on everyone’s lips for the next few weeks,” he summarised.

“I don’t get it,” Sonny said, baffled. “He would have gotten to make the announcement, anyway, but he should’ve at least waited for us to interview King again.”

“Yes, but as you say, you would have wanted to wait, and that means a reporter could’ve found out before he had his chance. Besides, he thinks it’s our job as attorneys to keep the big picture in mind, which, as he just put it, not all police officers are suited to.”

“Man, he’s just trying to make friends with everyone, isn’t he?” Sonny asked.

“That’s exactly what he’s doing, trying to build factions. He just doesn’t expect us to pass his comments between each other and torpedo his plans.”

Barba took a sip of his scotch as Sonny downed about half of his glass, feeling sorry because the liquor was probably way too good for that. He really wanted to be drunk, though.

“There’s nothing you can do about it now, except call Liv and ruin her weekend, too. Once the story is out there, it’s out.”

“Yeah. That’s gonna be fun,” Sonny muttered, leaning back against the couch.

“This wouldn’t have happened if I could have kept the case.”

Barba picked up the abandoned cannoli and took a bite, licking the white cream off his lips with a quick flick of his tongue. From the corner of his eyes, Sonny watched him, but without the usual interest he might have felt in the display, considering Barba’s gloomy expression.

“It’s not your fault, what happened with Copeland,” Sonny said.

Barba raised a brow at him.

“I know.”

“Yeah, I – it just sounded like…”

For some reason, it had felt like Barba was taking responsibility for drawing the eye of the media on them, for being reassigned against his will.

“I do wish I had done anything else during that interview,” Barba admitted, after a moment of silent chewing, staring at the muted TV. “I really just wanted to get Copeland away from his pitiful omega so you’d have a chance to get any useful information out of him. Now my entire career is unravelling over that moron making a bad guess on how high the balustrade of his damn balcony is.”

“Hey, it’s just one case. You’ll be back with us before you know it. In fact, I’m countin’ on that, because I’m already sick of Howe right now.”

“Maybe it would be that easy for you, Carisi. You’re an alpha. But every time I make a mistake…”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t, you were just unlucky, okay?” Sonny said, emphatically. “And I’ve known you for a while now. Like you’d let them keep you in the Tax Fraud Unit. Come on!”

He gave Barba’s shoulder a gentle pat and realised (half a second too late as usual) that he might’ve been a bit too enthusiastic.

Barba held his gaze for a moment, like he wasn’t quite sure what to make of Sonny.

“Your well of optimism just doesn’t run dry no matter how many times you are confronted with reality, does it?”

“Not usually,” Sonny admitted, with a smile. “You should try the pagnioli, by the way, they’re really good.”

With a slight shake of his head, Barba did as he was told.


	6. Chapter 6

“Hello, uh – sorry, Counsellor!”

In a typical display of his natural grace, Carisi barrelled right into Rafael’s back as Rafael turned the corner to the SVU main office. The stack of print-outs Carisi had been carrying cascaded towards the floor with a flutter like leaves rustling. Rafael caught himself with a hand on the wall.

“Sorry,” Carisi said, again, grabbing Rafael by his good shoulder to steady him. “Did I hurt your arm?”

“What’s the hurry, Detective?” Rafael just asked, sending him an unimpressed look.

“I wanted to join the interrogation of Jason King. I’m not too late, am I, Lieutenant?”

Standing at Rollins’ empty desk to scroll through an Excel file on the computer, Liv shook her head at him.

“No, King hasn’t shown up yet. You have time to clean up your mess.”

“Roger that.”

Grinning, Carisi went to his knees to collect the papers. Rafael side-stepped him.

“What are you doing here so early?” Liv asked.

“I just wanted to collect your files on the Ramirez case. We’ve finally gotten a court date. It only took – how many months? Long enough for me to forget half the witness statements. I need to prepare.”

“Of course. Rollins,” she told the detective just walking out of the break room with a cup of coffee in her hand, “can you get the Ramirez files for Barba?”

“Yeah, sure.”

With a nod of her head, she set off.

“Then again, I have to see whether I have time now that my new unit has handed me one of their most important cases concerning a fraudulent chain of pet stores,” Rafael said, with strained enthusiasm.

Liv looked at him with a commiserative smile. “It’ll work out in the end,” she said. “I’m sure this won’t be for long.”

Rafael shrugged his shoulders. Gallows humour, to him, was the only way in which he could still process his new situation at work. The D.A. had now introduced him to the whole Tax Fraud Unit – ‘just so you get to know them’. It did not bode well for him.

“I hear the damages to the state are up to sixty thousand dollars annually. That’s most of a junior detective’s yearly salary. We might have to fire one of you if I can’t get them convicted.” Rafael glanced at Carisi sitting on the ground, making no attempt to hide he was listening in while he collected his papers. “Which means you should probably wish me luck, Carisi. I hear the devil usually takes the hindmost.”

“’Hindmost’? Hey, I’ve been here for like, longer than half a year now. As SVUs go, that’s a record for me.”

The self-depreciating humour paired with Carisi’s brash smile made the corner of Rafael’s mouth twitch. He turned away from him to take the file Rollins had brought. She tapped Carisi’s shoulder on her way.

“Fin says King is here. I think he brought his whole family for support.”

“His brothers? That guy Finley talked about them…”

The two detectives made their way back down a hallway while Rafael leafed through the file, allowing names and stray lines to trigger memories in his head.

“Carisi seems to have grown on you,” Liv pointed out.

Surprised, Rafael looked up at her. She was smiling.

“Like mould on cheese,” he said, automatically. “What gave it away, the way I mock him every opportunity I get?”

“You always do that. He’s just an easy target.” She turned away from Rollins’ computer. “I just thought it felt like you really didn’t like him in the beginning and you seem to tolerate him now.”

“Carisi is marginally more talented than he let on at the start,” Rafael said, quickly. “That makes it easier to overlook the rest of him.”

“It was not an accusation,” Liv said, raising a brow at him. “You’re allowed to like Carisi. He’s a good man. I think so, too.”

Rafael decided that before he said anything else that Liv would find the need to remark on, he would rather concentrate on the case file he had been handed. However, his eyes simply glided over the text and photos.

It was true that he used to think Carisi was the epitome of one of the more annoying, if not dangerous, groups of alphas he knew, but so far Carisi had neatly bypassed every theory that Rafael had had for his behaviour, leaving Rafael only with a somewhat exhausting, but competent and friendly man to consider. That would have been a positive if it hadn’t still been so clear that Carisi was showing Rafael an uncommon amount of affection. It wasn’t _completely_ out of the realm of possibility that Carisi was simply so dense or careless he didn’t know how strange it was for an alpha to show up uninvited at an unmated omega’s doorstep in the evening with food and the intention to do the chores, but he couldn’t quite believe it.

Still, Carisi was not the kind of alpha who had to settle for an omega twelve years older than them if they wanted sex. The fact remained, however, even knowing that nothing sensible could come out of more than a friendly relationship between colleagues, that Rafael had found himself instinctively comfortable with Carisi on his couch, in his home, and with his fingers thus securely wriggled between the plates of Rafael’s armour. It was not a good precedent to set and really not something he wanted Liv, or anyone else for that matter, to be aware of.

Thankfully, before Liv could call him out, Rollins led a group into the room that even Rafael found more interesting than his strange relationship to the youngest detective on the team. They were four men dressed as if in uniform, all with black jeans and grey, non-descript pullovers. The shortest one walked between the other tree, all but drowning in his scarf and dark overcoat, reminding Rafael of a prisoner surrounded by his guards. They were all gaunt, with high cheekbones, bright blue eyes and pitch-black hair.

Rollins made three men sit on some of the spare chairs standing along one wall of the room and gestured towards the last of them to follow.

“I’m guessing that’s the King family?” Rafael asked quietly, glancing at Liv.

“They make quite an entrance.”

Rafael remembered Finley’s words: three alphas and an omega living in their parents inherited house, with the neighbours entertaining themselves with rumours, no doubt pertaining to the relationship between the siblings. Rafael couldn’t help but agree that there was something that could spurn one’s fantasy in the way the pretty, frail-looking omega with the soulfully sad eyes now sat sandwiched between the remaining alphas, his hands folded in his lap and his gaze on the floor; on the other hand, total obedience to alpha family members was simply expected by many traditional families.

“Is King still the main suspect?”

“Yes, but that’s not saying much in this case. Howe is pretty happy to have him, but I think it’s a mistake to not consider other options, so I have Fin working on that.”

They were talking quietly enough not to be heard, but Rafael could feel the gazes of the other Kings in his back and found that he wasn’t imagining things when he glanced over his shoulder. The omega was still just staring at his knees like he had something interesting to read there, of course. The sight triggered pity and repulsion in equal measures. Rafael turned back to Liv.

“Good luck with your serial killer, then. All of New York is watching you.”

The caustic little smile he gave her was met with a reproachful glance.

“Don’t remind me.”

-

“Your SVU is quite a handful.”

Rafael looked up from his plate of seafood risotto at Howe, who sat across the table from him. When the Alpha had asked him along for lunch to ‘talk a couple things over’, Rafael had already guessed that he was going to hear about the case that had, by this point, settled comfortably in the list of news that sprung up in the papers to fill a few columns every couple of days even if there was nothing new to report on. However, he hadn’t expected the SVU itself to be made a topic of conversation.

“I always found them to be dedicated.”

“No doubt about that, but I can’t get them to commit on anything. They have now connected Jason King to all four victims, but Lieutenant Benson is still wasting our time on wild goose chases.” Howe let the spaghetti wrap around his fork, a slow, languid motion. “Yes, he has alibis in two cases, but they are provided by various brothers. Obviously those are worthless.”

“You’re the one who’ll have to convince the jury of that. How strong are the connections?”

“He threatened that girl at Starbucks, visited the library Jones was employed at, and has been caught buying something on the security camera in the corner store that dead junkie worked in two weeks before his death. Also, a niece of his visited the kindergarten that Solman worked at,” Howe said, curling one outstretched finger after another into a lose fist with each argument.

“Some of those are pretty tedious. Enough to make him a suspect, but before the wrong judge, you’d fall at the first hurdle in arraignment court,” Rafael said. “Just give them a little time. It’ll only benefit you in the long run.”

“I suppose so,” Howe admitted. “Still, this should all go faster. I’m getting requests from TV stations and newspapers nationwide. This kind of thing weighs on a country’s soul – preying on our weakest in such a horrible manner. The people want to be informed.”

There was badly veiled disappointment in his voice that he could not be the one to bring them good or at least report-worthy news. From the way he had put it, Rafael could clearly tell he had already prepared his next official statements.

“I’m positive they’ll find some gruesome titbits to keep the readers hooked until you have more to tell them,” Rafael said, stabbing a prawn. “You wouldn’t want to fall flat on your face with that kind of media attention on you, would you?”

Howe shook his head. “My instinct tells me we have the right guy,” he said. “I just think they should focus their efforts on bringing me evidence against him and so far, I really haven’t managed to get a handle on Lieutenant Benson.”

“They forgot to add that in construction,” Rafael said flatly.

Howe gave a little chuckle. “Well, you must have a trick, you get results with them. Although I hear Lieutenant Benson is quite fond of you…”

“You don’t listen to that kind of gossip, do you?” Rafael asked, and impressed himself by sounding honestly surprised. Those fifteen plus years spent tripping defendants up in court hadn’t been all wasted, it seemed.

“Of course not,” Howe was quick to say. “I just think that sometimes, it’s probably quite handy to be an omega in this line of work.” He drew a vague circle in the air with his fork. “Doesn’t ruffle as many feathers. I’m a rather potent alpha myself, so other alphas tend to make me their benchmark test – like Benson and her people are doing right now.”

“I’m sure it’s a heavy cross you carry,” Rafael said, finally unable to keep his eyebrows from twitching upwards anymore.

Again, Howe chuckled. “I get what you mean. Aside from the competition it gets me, it’s not the worst fate to have a forceful alpha nature. Still, you should be happy you don’t have to deal with that. We alphas can be so competitive that it gets exhausting.”

While Rafael pushed the last remnants of his risotto around, he wondered how he could use the fact that Howe didn’t seem to see him as a rival in his favour when he went about trying to steal his job back.

-

“Counsellor!”

Glancing over his shoulder towards the entrance of 1 Hogan Place, Rafael spotted Carisi pushing the door open and holding it for a young woman before sprinting towards him. He was dressed in his uniform, complete with hat, which, thanks to his run and the wet autumn wind blowing hard north, sat a little askew on his head, placing his looks somewhere between more handsome than Rafael was ready to admit and somewhat ridiculous – a common mix for him. Rafael stopped and waited for him to catch up.

“How are you? How’s the arm?” Carisi asked.

“Still not miraculously healed, despite my best hopes. But I will live. Were you visiting Howe?”

“I _tried_ too,” Carisi said, his face showing open disdain. “When he heard we hadn’t gotten further on King or brought him someone else to arrest, though, he put me off to go to a business dinner. I guess I’ll just try again tomorrow. We’ve got this other suspect now, uh – you got some time to talk about the case?”

“I’m not on the case.”

“Yeah, but Howe’s more on the news than on the case, to be honest. The Lieu said if I wanted to keep you updated and you didn’t mind – you’re still officially an advisor, after all.” He nodded towards a police car parked down the street. “I could drive you home while we talk.”

The fact that the SVU preferred him over his replacement did admittedly flatter Rafael, enough to consider taking a little chunk out of his afternoon for this. Besides, avoiding the New York subway while his arm was broken was probably a good idea. Rafael had been knocked around in cramped wagons enough to know.

“Enlighten me,” he said, once they had taken their seats in the car and Carisi had wisely resisted the obvious urge (he’d leaned over briefly, then twitched back) to buckle Rafael’s belt for him when he struggled with the logistics of it thanks to the cast.

“This new suspect is an alpha who was locked up before. We can tie him to two of the victims so far – Solman and the dead kid. He slept with both of them. He’s also been hospitalised a couple times for psychiatric issues.”

“That’s still two victims too few, but considering how weak some of the connections are with King, it’s about on par,” Rafael decided, easily opening the buttons of his coat. His left hand had gotten a lot more dexterous lately.

“Yeah, that’s what we thought. So maybe we’re completely off-base with the whole serial killer thing. It could just be someone whose cleaning house on his ex-lovers, you know, and the ones we found just happened to be single working omegas.”

“Of course, that would open the list of potential victims to every kind of omega, and perhaps not even just them,” Rafael concluded.

“Yeah, for example if they’d gotten married after being with him or something.” Carisi shook his head. “Well, if you wanna know more, I’ll show you next time you’re at the precinct.”

“Force Howe to listen, too. It might not be a narrative he enjoys, but I don’t think he’s unreasonable enough to right out ignore it.”

Carisi made noise that didn’t suggest he agreed with Rafael’s assessment of the A.D.A. as he pulled the car around a corner. For a moment, Rafael considered putting in a good word for Howe to keep the case going as smoothly as he could ensure, but, remembering their conversation over lunch earlier this week, decided against it. Since he was such a _potent alpha_ , he could surely handle his own spats with the police.

For a while, they drove in silence, Carisi moving the car through the rush hour traffic with more daring than Rafael was strictly comfortable with. He was about to say something when Carisi shifted and glanced at him.

“Counsellor…” Carisi hesitated. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

“You can always try”, Rafael said, attempting not to let it shine through that his curiosity was piqued. What could Carisi want to know about him? Probably something irrelevant that had just flitted into his head. “Whether you’ll get an answer is a different matter.”

Smiling, Carisi came to a stop at a red light. “Okay, fair enough,” he decided. “It’s nothing inappropriate or anything. I just wondered why you got into law.”

Rafael paused. It had been a long time since anyone had asked him that question, at least without the kind of undertone that suggested he really shouldn’t have.

“The same reason most eighteen-year-olds have to get into law, I imagine, unless they do it for money – idealism. I wanted to help.”

“Right, but... okay, look, I’m a cop, I know the law is not fair to omegas, but until I started taking night classes and working SVU, I don’t think I really realised just _how_ bad it is. I’m not saying there’s no value to the law, I still wanna get the bar, too, after all, but I think if I were an omega… I don’t know if I’d ever gotten the idea to protect those kinda rules, you know?”

Yes, Rafael did know, and especially working SVU, those were thoughts he had on a regular basis. The answer he gave Carisi was one he’d been telling himself for years like a mantra.

“I’ve always been of the opinion that you can change a system best from within. Besides, if people see an omega working my kind of job, then it should help combat the stereotypes that lead to those laws existing in the first place.”

“I guess that’s true,” Carisi said.

“The law is not perfect, but it is the only one we have, for now, so I try to get what I want in its parameters. There are certain things I’d never do, however. Marrying, for example, seems decidedly suicidal to me.” No matter how much he might love someone, he did not intend to give them the legal right to abuse and rape him if they saw fit.

Carisi made a huffing noise. Streetlights and shop signs illuminated his face in rapid succession as they drove. He looked dejected.

“That’s such a sad thing to say,” he said, quietly.

“Why? You think I should be enamoured with the idea of erasing my rights as a person pertaining to my alpha?” Rafael mocked.

“No, of course not. But I’m Catholic, I do believe in getting married. Before God and men and… everything.” He smiled briefly at Rafael. “When I was younger, I was really excited that at some point I might meet an omega who trusts me that much and I was always told I had to live up to that responsibility and be the best alpha I could be for them. It sounded great. But now, I get it if an omega is afraid of getting married. I’ve seen how often it doesn’t work out in the real world.” He sighed. “Marriage shouldn’t be tainted with laws like that.”

What Carisi had to say about marriage was the same sort of syrupy romantic nonsense Rafael had heard as justifications for those ridiculous laws since he had been a child, and, seeing the marriage of his own parents, they had rung very hollow then as well. However, there was something in Carisi’s voice that made it a little more difficult for him to cut the alpha down to size. He sounded like he had honestly believed in that stuff at some point; and it helped that he had supposedly left these childish notions behind, too.

“It feel as if I have asked _you_ a personal question instead of the other way around,” Rafael said, instead of giving an answer.

Carisi chuckled. “Yeah, sorry. The last half year just really made me question a few things.”

“Doubts are preferable to blind acceptance,” Rafael answered. “Our laws are far from perfect, but they’re not written in stone, either. If enough people start to protest them, they will, eventually, be changed.” Rafael crossed his arms over his chest and raised a brow. “Of course, I’ll probably be dead by the point we get to the marriage laws, but you’re a little younger than me, you might still live to see it from the rocking chair in your retirement home.”

“I hope it’s a little earlier than that,” Carisi said, grinning. “Okay, I’m done. Sorry for putting all that heavy stuff on you after work, Counsellor.”

“I welcome any sign that you do sometimes think about the things you do all day, Carisi.”

Carisi just rolled his eyes at Rafael, half-smiled. Since their time in the hospital, it didn’t feel like his barbs had quite the impact they used to and it didn’t bother Rafael as much as he thought it probably should.

“If you want to repay me for my advice, you could let me out here,” he said, craning his neck. They were only a couple of streets away from the apartment building he lived in and he saw a Westside Market down the road. What little food and other essentials he usually kept at home were running out.

“If you wanna, I could come and then drive you home with your groceries.”

“Isn’t that misappropriation of police property?” Rafael asked, tapping the car door.

“I’m assisting a hurt person!” Carisi argued. “That’s like, the epitome of being a cop, aside from helping old people across the street.”

With a bemused shake of his head, Rafael freed himself from the seat belt while Sonny found a parking spot for them.

“I hope you work on your defences before they let you lose in court.”

Past the rich display of fruits and vegetables, they passed into the store and got a shopping cart. Rafael picked up some bread, cheese, milk, bottled water, and a couple other basics on their way through the aisles. It didn’t take him long to find his way to the coffee, which had been his main goal. Everything else he could probably live without if absolutely pressed, but his dwindling supply of beans had worried him. Carisi trailed behind and watched as Rafael deliberated between packets of Stumptown and Verve.

“Are you a gourmet when it comes to coffee?” Carisi asked.

“That depends entirely on how late I am at the office.”

“Yeah, I feel that.” Carisi grinned, surveying the rows. “Any tips on what I should be drinking? I got mock exams coming up.”

“Considering the amount of studying you should be doing, as a former law student, I’d recommend intravenous caffeine injections.” He glanced at the selection again. “Instant coffee, I assume?”

“Beans, actually. Got that machine as a present from my grandparents when I made detective. My grandmother says instant coffee doesn’t even count.”

“I might like her,” Rafael said with a brief smile. “What kind roast do you enjoy?”

“I drink everything. Probably medium, if it came down to it.”

After a moment of contemplation, Rafael picked a package of Atomic Cafe from the shelf and put it in Carisi’s hand.

“Try this.”

“Sounds fancy.” Carisi smiled, showing his dimples again.

“It does its job, too.”

Rafael also made a point out of taking a detour for the sweets section, since endless hours poring over pet store balance sheets had depleted his reserve of snacks at work. He was just picking up a bag of Hershey’s Kisses when an old woman passed them by, smiling jovially.

“You shouldn’t let him have so many sweets, Sir,” she told Carisi. “Your omega’s getting a little soft.”

Carisi looked at her like someone had thrown a bucket full of cold water at him, still holding a chocolate bar whose label he’d been reading like he’d forgotten it was in his hand.

“Hey, that’s none of your business – he looks good!” he managed, when the surprise wore off. The woman was already past them, though, not listening now that she had given them her advice. Obviously still taken aback, Carisi glanced at Rafael.

“The hell was that about?”

“Apparently, she’s mistaken me for your two-year-old son and was trying to give you pointers on my education.”

Anger bitter on his tongue, Rafael all but chucked the bag back onto the shelf. Carisi flinched.

“Sorry, uh, I probably should’ve said you’re not my omega.”

“Probably.”

But then, Rafael had been so surprised by someone being that bold-facedly rude that he hadn’t said anything at all, so he wasn’t one to talk. He considered grabbing something extra sugary out of spite, but that seemed too silly, and he’d lost his appetite, anyway. It was like life conspired to ruin even the most ordinary of content moments for him. He couldn’t go shopping for groceries with a colleague without getting loudly reminded of the fact that in someone’s eyes some part of his existence was in some way wrong. At least when he was insulted about his personality, job, or attitude, Rafael could face these accusations with conviction. Being called out for not fulfilling the ideal of the lithe omega was just so _petty_ it had left him unusually tongue-tied.

They walked to the registers in silence. When Carisi helped him put the items on the conveyor belt, he reached forward to grab his Atomic Cafe to separate it from Rafael’s groceries. Rafael pulled it back.

“For your help,” he said, curtly.

“You don’t have to…”

“I know, Carisi.” Rafael forced himself to soften his voice. It wasn’t him he was mad at. Carisi had given defending him a valiant try. “But now that I’ve paid you, I can make you carry the water bottles to the car.”

Carisi smiled slightly. It occurred to Rafael that while he had shortly before registered it wasn’t as easy to make Carisi mad anymore and accepted it, he’d now actively attempted to make him happy and it had worked.

They got his groceries to the car. When Carisi had driven him home and carried the water and bags up the stairs, leaving Rafael only with his briefcase, he stopped before his apartment door.

“You need help with anything else, Counsellor?”

There were dishes in the sink and Rafael already was annoyed at the prospect of changing the sheets one-handed, but Rafael he his head. Carisi had been past normal behaviour for a colleague from the moment he stood on Rafael’s door with pastries, sure, but this would have felt like abusing his friendly nature.

“No. I’m sure Liv wonders where you are, you should get back to the station.”

Nodding his head, Carisi halted and looked him in the eyes.

“Hey, sorry about that situation in the supermarket again –”

“Forget about it, Carisi, you weren’t the one lecturing perfect strangers. And I did get a compliment out of it, I suppose.”

Rafael hadn’t missed that Carisi had called him good-looking.

Instead of giving an answer, the detective’s cheeks and ears turned pink. He grinned nervously.

Struck with a sudden realisation, Rafael wondered if all the strangely affectionate attention Carisi had been paying him didn’t actually have a very simple explanation.


	7. Chapter 7

“The King family again?” Barba asked, looking towards the four of them collecting their coats from the backs of a row of chairs as Jason King was returned to them.

“Yeah. It’s always all of them when we call in Jason. They stick together,” Rollins said.

Sonny wanted to commend that – say that it wasn’t a bad thing, that he liked his family, too, and probably would’ve stuck like glue to his sisters if any of them had ever gotten in trouble with the police. However, there was something intensely unnerving about the way the Kings moved like they were a single unit, more one person than four.

“How are his alibis looking?”

“It’s always just one or more of his brothers. For the night of the last murder, he spent some time with all of them in the emergency room, though. One of the guys had an upset stomach. We managed to verify that they were there,” Sonny recapitulated. “I guess he could have dragged Solman home, raped her, killed her and then gone, but… I just don’t think he’s that cold.”

“He wouldn’t be the first murderer to compartmentalise excessively well,” Barba pointed out.

“No,” Sonny admitted. “But I don’t know, I just don’t get that vibe from him. Maybe I’m wrong. Seems to me all he really cares about is his brothers and that’s about it. He’s got a chip on his shoulder about non-traditional omegas alright, but I think he just wants his protect little hide-out from the modern world.”

Across the room, he saw the King omega looking over at Barba while he wound a thick wool scarf around his frail throat. When Barba noticed and gave him a curt nod, he dropped his gaze to his feet again, his long, wispy hair falling over his face like a curtain as his brother put a hand on his back and pushed him towards the door.

“Man, looking at him, it’s like seeing a dog that’s been kicked. You just wanna go in there and take him away from the people that have him now,” Sonny muttered, when they were gone.

“Lawrence King?” Rollins guessed.

“Yeah.”

“A walking advertisement for the rebellion against social norms indeed,” Barba weighed in. “But don’t forget he’s not actually an animal. He does have some capacity to choose.”

Rollins glanced at Barba. “I’d have thought you’d be the most sympathetic to him.”

“I understand the effects of education and compulsion, we get enough domestic abuse victims here. But if the only omegas that ever step over the lines drawn for them are those whose alpha relatives _allow_ them, I think that defeats the purpose of the exercise,” Rafael said. “Of course, the King family on a whole seem...”

“Disturbed?” Rollins supplied.

Barba inclined his head in agreement. “You’re still working on the other suspect?”

“Yeah, but we’re not really getting anywhere connecting him to the other two victims,” Sonny said.

“Howe is pretty adamant we get a move on and arrest somebody already, but the Lieutenant says it’s too early. She’s right, too,” Rollins said.

Sonny nodded his head. His patience with Howe had pretty much run out already, which was why he’d immediately taken the chance to talk to Barba when he had visited Benson for a last conversation about the Ramirez case before it went to trial in two days. It was helpful to actually brainstorm this whole matter with someone who was interested in finding a culprit instead of the scapegoat who could generate the most media attention. He wouldn’t go as far as saying Howe didn’t want to have the right guy, but he was obviously pretty open to believe whatever fit his agenda best.

“Have you spoken to the relatives and friends of the other victims about this new suspect yet?”

“We’ve been trying to avoid it until we had to,” Sonny said. Poking around in these memories, giving people potentially false hope only to have another investigation turn up with nothing, that wasn’t something you did lightly.

“I would say you’re there now,” Barba decided, looking between them.

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking that for a while,” Rollins agreed. “I’m gonna go to ask the Lieutenant about it. See you for the trial, Counsellor.”

“Wait a sec, I’m coming, too,” Sonny told Rollins, slipping off the edge of the table he’d perched on. However, before he could move, Barba lifted a hand.

“Carisi – I have a request.”

He stopped.

“What is it?”

“It’s nothing to do with the job.”

Even though Sonny didn’t know what exactly to expect, but could imagine what not to, he felt his heart stumble and miss a beat.

“I ordered a new bookcase a few weeks ago, but the company says they’ll only deliver it to the front door.” Barba tapped his cast. “It’s not a long way upstairs, but I probably won’t manage to wrestle it into the elevator when it arrives this evening. Does your offer to help me out with menial household tasks still stand? I’ll order dinner, too.”

“Sure,” Sonny said, hoping his smile wasn’t too bright. It was nothing but lending a hand to Barba, of course, and he wasn’t going to be an idiot about it and let something more slip, like he’d done in the supermarket. At least Barba didn’t seem to dislike him anymore, and that was more than he could’ve hoped for at the start. “When do you need me to come?”

“Around seven, if you can make it.”

“You got it, Counsellor.”

“Good. Thank you,” Barba said and smiled briefly – honestly, without pretence, the way you did when someone was doing you a favour, without the usual hint of sarcasm.

Sonny joined Rollins at her desk as Barba strode out of the office.

“What are you grinning about?” she asked, looking up from her computer screen.

“Nothing. Hey, you think you can help me on the security footage for the Thiller thing? I gotta get out on time.”

“To do something with Barba?” she guessed.

“Well, he needs help getting a parcel up to his apartment, you know? Because of his cast.”

“And he doesn’t have neighbours?” Rollins prodded, her brows moving upwards slightly.

That was an admittedly really easy way Barba could get his bookcase and knowing just how many obvious solutions to his problem Barba had skipped (friends, family, randomly helpful passers-by) to instead choose Sonny gave him another little injection of endorphins.

“Maybe the neighbours are not that close in his house,” he said, fully aware he had to be smiling like an idiot now.

“I’m sure that’s it,” Rollins said, turning back to her work. “Well, send me the data, then, I wouldn’t want to keep you from Barba.”

-

“You really don’t have to help me put the bookcase up, Carisi. I just needed it in my apartment.”

“We’re gonna wait for the food anyway, though, right? Then you don’t have to look at the boxes for weeks until you can use your hand again.”

With the box cutter Barba had handed him, Sonny tore right through the duct tape with which the cardboard boxes had been liberally secured. Barba sat on the edge of his bed. Because Sonny was a worse person than his priest believed, he had taken a curious look around the bedroom when Barba led him inside so he could put the parcels down. There was a tall wardrobe and an additional smaller cabinet to the left of the bed. Said bed was covered with pillows and a blanket wrapped in silky grey cases on a black sheet. _Infinite Jest_ laid on the bedside table, next to one of the bottles of water Carisi had carried up the stairs for Barba last time they’d talked.

The parts of the new bookcase fell in neatly with the dark colours and classical look Barba seemed to enjoy – it certainly wasn’t Ikea. Sonny laid the wooden boards all out in front of him while Barba studied the instruction manual. He was still in his work clothes, which was a shame, Sonny thought, because while the black suit and blue tie suited him as well as always, when Sonny had dropped by last time, he had enjoyed the sight of Barba all dressed down.

“Okay, so that’s the back wall, obviously. Then we’ve got the upper and lower frame and the side boards…”

While he talked, he began pushing the parts he had pulled from the packages around like Lego blocks, sorting them around the back plate.

“I’m getting the electric screwdriver,” Barba announced.

“You have one?”

“Yes – I have moved before.” Barba vanished shortly from the room. Sonny heard a door open and a little shuffling, then Barba returned with the power tool in his good hand. “Although I do try to avoid using it when I don’t have to. Tools and me usually result in a lot of splintered wood.”

“My dad’s the same,” Sonny said with a grin as he took Barba’s screwdriver. “My aunt taught me. We had a tree house in her garden I helped build.”

While he talked, he ripped open one of the small plastic bags and set a screw against a pre-drilled hole.

“Not to criticise her teachings, but according to the manual you have the wrong kind of screw,” Barba said, leaning down to glance at the small booklet. “Aren’t you supposed to use the big ones to attach the side board to the back?”

Sonny leaned in as well and their heads almost knocked together. He could smell Barba – not just the expensive sandalwood aftershave but _him_ , the scent of an omega, just a little sweet, alluring in a way that probably had to do with a lot of hormones Sonny had forgotten from biology class. Barba’s eyes were striking this close up, too – green like leaves, with a gaze sharp as the edge of broken glass.

It was that which had Sonny leaning back.

“Sorry, I… yeah, you’re right.”

“I usually am,” Barba said and smiled at him. “Although I have to admit, widening my expertise to the field of DYI is gratifying.”

If he had noticed Sonny making no move to pull back from him at first, he didn’t say so, or he didn’t mind.

By the time Sonny had wrestled the bookcase into submission, the sushi Barba had ordered for them was already waiting on the table. With Barba using his good arm to help him keep the heavy case steady, Sonny heaved it upright and pushed it into the left corner of the room, where it stood next to a framed reprint of a painted picture of lilies.

“You like van Gogh?” he asked.

“You recognise van Gogh?” Barba retorted.

“Hey, I know quite a few painters. My sister studied art history, I used to practice for exams with her.”

“The one I’ve met – Bella?”

“No, Gina. Although Bella told me to give you her best.”

His sister Bella was a beta, just like her husband Tommy, and though they hadn’t met Barba under fortunate circumstances, they were still thankful for his help. Not many A.D.A.s would have agreed to take a case where an omega was supposed to be proven a rapist and then even manage to get a result.

“I hope she and her husband are well.”

“They are. They got married a month ago. I’ll be an uncle soon, too.”

The thought of that always brought a smile to his lips.

“Maybe you can help build the nursery without endangering the newborn. This looks rather sturdy.” Barba rapped the side of the bookcase with his knuckles.

“Hey, you ever doubted me, Counsellor?” Sonny asked, grinning, as he followed Barba back into the living room.

“Constantly. Here – at least your food couldn’t get cold.”

While Sonny had put the last touches on the bookcase, Barba had placed plates on the table and transferred the sushi onto them from whatever plastic case it had probably been delivered in. There were chopsticks, too – nice ones made of polished, reddish wood with slim, black, circular engravings at the end, not the kind you threw away after the meal. He even had served sake in the traditional flat, little cups. Sonny pulled back his chair to sit down, but found himself looking at the display a moment longer, standing still.

“Is there a problem?” Barba asked.

“No. I just, uh, didn’t think you could be so domestic.”

“This is more polite hospitality. I would have pushed the boundaries to domestic if I had cooked for you, but I wasn’t going to dare that with just one hand,” Barba said, picking up a piece of maki and dipping it into a small white bowl of soy sauce.

“Maybe,” Sonny admitted. “Still, it looks great, so thanks.”

He chose a piece of tamago maki, watching Barba across the table, and couldn’t help but let his thoughts flash back to Rollins insistence on how easy it would have been for the attorney to get another helper. Was he just being delusionally hopeful now, or did Barba actually have some sort of interest in him?

“How are the mock exams going?” Barba asked, tearing through Sonny’s thoughts. “Have you buried your dreams of being a lawyer yet?”

Sonny grinned. “Not quite that bad. Feels like I don’t do much but study and work anymore, though.”

“Yet you took time out of your day to put up my bookcase.”

“Actually, a little manual labour felt quite good after all that sitting around and reading,” Sonny said. “I even miss getting to go to the gym.”

“That wouldn’t happen to me,” Barba said, with an ironic smile. “Of course, the friendly lady in the supermarket has already pointed that out.”

The mention of her reminded Sonny of something. He held up his finger in a silent gesture bidding Barba to wait and got up to dig through his backpack. When he returned to the table, he was holding a bag of Hershey’s Kisses. Barba looked at it, stumped.

“You, uh, didn’t get yours,” Sonny said, pushing through the awkwardness he could feel creeping onto him. “You aren’t overweight, anyway.”

The plastic bag looked a little out of place on Barba’s meticulously set table of sushi.

“Besides, we gotta have dessert, right?” Sonny added.

“You really are an odd alpha, Carisi,” Barba said, after a moment.

“I’m sure people tell you that you’re on odd omega all the time, so… is that a good thing?”

“When you bring me chocolate, yes.”

Barba gave a brief smile and Sonny was sure that he had seen another flicker of curiosity in his eyes. Feeling successful, he picked out another piece of sushi.

-

“Did you find him?”

Rollins shook her head as she caught her breath. She had just made the rounds around the first floor of the court house while Sonny had tried his luck outside. They had reconvened at Benson, who was standing in front of the door to the court room Barba was supposed to be doing his job in since twenty minutes ago. Benson had her arms crossed over her chest, her expression tight. Sonny’s own stomach had tied itself into knots already when Barba didn’t show up in time for the Ramirez trial, and now that he still hadn’t made his appearance, he couldn’t find it in himself to stand still.

“Maybe he just forgot,” Rollins said.

“That wouldn’t be like him. Besides, I called him five times. Barba is never separated from his phone. He would have noticed.” Shaking her head, Benson looked at her own phone again.

“Carmen says she hasn’t seen him today, either,” Sonny supplied. “She figured he’d head straight for court.”

“Maybe he got in an accident. If he’s knocked out, he won’t be checking his phone,” Fin said matter-of-factly and Sonny nodded his head. It was the only thing that made sense to him, little as he liked to contemplate it. Barba being late for court without at least warning them he was stuck in traffic or something just didn’t seem right.

He was on another senseless tour around the building when his phone made a _pling_ in his pocket. Barba’s name flitted across the black bar at the top of the lock screen and Sonny put in the wrong password twice in his haste to get to the message. His brief moment of relief turned immediately to ice-cold fear when he actually opened it.

_Someone grabbed me in front of my house and put me in a trunk. Havent seen them yet but more than one, armed. Street sign outside the window says west si??? rest obscured, can see trees, some industrial building, i hear a busy street. Dont think its in nyc, but we didnt drive longer than an hour, maybe less. Have to hide the phone but enabled gps tracking._

Pushing a confused guard out of the way, Sonny sprinted to meet his colleagues. Before he’d reached them, he already saw Rollins and Fin leaning over a phone, while Benson was talking to someone at the other end of her own, giving curt orders by the tone of her voice. He could guess what they had just read. When Rollins looked up at him, here were deep furrows in her forehead.

“Fin, get someone to tell the judge,” Benson said, turning the phone briefly away from her mouth. “We need to be in the car, now.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: As most of you have probably guessed, Rafael ended up in the hands of a rapist-murderer, so while the worst does not happen, this is by no means a comfortable chapter. Please consider this before reading on in case you think this might affect you.

There was still a little sunlight coming through the tiny, dirt-stained rectangle window that sat right under the ceiling, which made the basement room look less terrifying than it had any right to. It illuminated a mattress with a nice, clean, white sheet and the heap of Rafael’s pants next to it on the concrete ground in a dim, golden hue.

His kidnapper had muttered about taking the Blackberry ‘so you won’t be doing anything stupid’, but apparently hadn’t counted on the fact that Rafael had another phone, once conceptualised as one for private matters, but now mostly a work phone for social events and people who were allowed to want his attention after he had left the office. Once the door had slammed shut behind his kidnapper, Rafael had finally used the fact that his hand had come loose in the sling of the rope tying his wrist to his cast and pushed up the blindfold. He had a feeling he knew too well why he had been relieved of his pants and underwear, and even considering it made him panic too much to think straight, so he hadn’t, had instead concentrated on worming his way over to the window to give any kind of useful information to the police.

Without thought, he had sent the messages straight to Carisi, Liv, Fin, one after the other. They would be waiting in court to hear from him, anyway, and were a much faster, more direct relay than 911. Also, though he could have pulled out his gag, he didn’t dare speak anyway, for fear that someone outside would hear.

Messages sent, he had slid over to the mattress and pushed the phone under it. He hesitated briefly now as he stared at the mattress again, then at the door. He’d already been left alone for quite some time, it was unlikely they’d leave him enough to put together an escape. He thought there were footsteps closing in, too. He had to pull the fabric back over his eyes and put his hand back into the coils of the rope or risk getting found out, but his heart was hammering in his chest like it wanted to crack the ribs. Couldn’t he try to make a run for it?

But there were at least two people, he knew for a fact that one had a gun, the muzzle of which he’d felt cold against his neck. They had kept Rafael in a trunk, where he’d banged his broken arm until the pain drove tears into his eyes, and it still sat deep in his bones. Plus, while he might manage to loosen the rope that had been tied around his ankles after the pants had been stripped, they sat tight and he had only one working hand. 

No, Rafael decided. He’d made his move by calling for help and would give the police the best chance to make a rescue by not making that obvious. He knew this was the sensible thing to do, and yet the thought of blinding himself again and accepting what came next was terrifying.

Rafael took a deep breath and pulled the cloth down over his eyes. Then, he forced his fingers behind the rough, thick rope again and skidded backwards, towards the left corner of the room, where he’d originally been thrown.

The door creaked as it was opened, then closed. A key was turned.

It turned out Rafael didn’t have to spend much time in the dark. The cloth – a long scarf, as it turned out – was pulled off. It left him looking at Lawrence King’s pale, delicate face. The omega regarded him with his soft eyes.

“Hello, Rafael.”

Rafael stared at him. They had, of course, considered the brothers were lying for Jason. He wondered if the idea that they might do more than that had come up with the officers, but been discarded before it could reach him as a theory.

Lawrence pulled the rag out of Rafael’s mouth. There was no excitement in his expression, he seemed almost distracted; Rafael had the chilling thought that he looked like a farmer busying himself with an animal.

He swallowed a few times. His tongue was dry. The ground was cold and hard under his bare legs. He glanced at the door again, wondering if Jason was about to join them, and pushed away the thought of the mattress once more.

He could talk now, but he had no idea what to say. He had seen the reports, the relative regularity of them. He knew what was going to happen to next.

“Did we find all the victims?” he asked because it was the only thing he could think of.

Lawrence looked mildly surprised. At least Rafael seemed to have his attention.

“Oh, no,” he said, in his small voice. “You missed one, a woman. But that was a while ago, yes.”

“And you… help your brother… ?” Rafael asked, hearing his own voice crack in the middle of the sentence. He tried to summon all the bravery that people so disliked about him, but he felt small, hurt, and scared for his life.

“Jason?” Lawrence smiled. “That was pretty stupid of the officers. Jason is so kind. He would never do any of this. He doesn’t even know.”

“He did threaten Lopez,” Rafael remembered.

“He warned her. That’s what an alpha should do, isn’t it? Make sure the omegas are safe? He knew an omega like her would not live long. He was right,” Lawrence said, almost saddened.

The blatant disregard for his own involvement in the self-fulfilling prophecy was so callous Rafael didn’t know what to answer. He wished he had known where exactly he was. If he had, he could have make a guess how long it would take for the police to reach him. He could have guessed if he would still be alive.

Lawrence grabbed Rafael by the broken arm, making pain explode in his nervous system and all thoughts of rescue vanished. The moment of shock was used by Lawrence to drag him towards the mattress. Only when Rafael had managed to gasp a few mouthfuls of air did he realise Lawrence was currently fixing the rope around his arms. If he realised Rafael could have freed himself, though, he didn’t let it show.

“So you’re doing this for…” Rafael realised he didn’t know the names of the other two brothers.

“This is my idea,” Lawrence said. His smile was unpleasant.

Rafael just stared at him. Well, that was a surprise. Then again, he had never even talked to Lawrence. Appearances could be deceiving.

“Shouldn’t you be happy? You like omegas to have their own ideas, don’t you, Rafael?”

He pulled himself together, swallowed the pain and the fear. Obviously, Lawrence had a problem with him. That was good. Talking, he thought, keep him talking. The more he talked, the longer Rafael escaped what would happen afterwards.

“Is this a philosophical exercise?” Rafael asked. “Are you asking me whether I would give free will to people, even if some will abuse the privilege?”

“It’s not about people. It’s about us. We’re not like them, Rafael. What you do is wrong. What you _are_ is wrong. You rebel against your nature, _our_ nature.”

“That’s why we have to die?” Rafael asked. It was better, saying ‘we’. It made him feel not quite so alone, linking hands in thoughts with the dead, even if they were depressing company. “If this is about educating us on why we’re wrong, then why do you kill us? I won’t be able to be a good omega when I’m dead.”

Frowning, Lawrence shook his head. He opened the sports bag he had brought, his back turned to Rafael.

“You’re so selfish, you know that? That’s what I dislike about you so much. Omegas are supposed to give, but you only think of yourself.” He sighed. “I don’t care about you, or the others. You’re bad, and you infect the things around you. It’s like leaving a rotten apple in the fruit bowl. Eventually, it will spread, you know. The rot. The sickness. The worms go from one to the next.”

“You’ve killed five people. You said it yourself – doesn’t that make you more like us? In some world, I’m sure that’s an achievement,” Rafael bit back.

Lawrence cocked his head, turning to him. With his thin limbs, slim joints and porcelain skin, he seemed almost doll-like in this position. He really looked quite the perfect omega, Rafael thought, you could have asked anyone.

“No. I give because I heal. I heal everyone by taking you away. I have to work harder than I should, though, but that’s your fault.”

Rafael saw him digging through the bag again and pushed his frantic brain for something to say to keep Lawrence’s focus.

“I understand the murders, but what about the rape? Is that just to keep your brothers entertained?”

Because he had smelled an alpha when he was being pushed into the trunk, he was sure of that, and it didn’t seem to him like Lawrence would have a boyfriend when he was herded by his family that much. Of course, he also hadn’t seemed much like a murderer, either.

“My brothers don’t touch filthy omegas like you.”

Rafael narrowed his eyes at him as a thought came to him – Officer Finley’s talk of the neighbourhood rumours. He would grasp at every straw to prolong the conversation.

“But good omegas like you?” he probed.

Anger coloured Lawrence’s pale cheeks red. He shot forward and grabbed Rafael by the throat, digging his thin, hard fingers deep into his flesh.

“How dare you?! We’re a proper family – we’re not like the rest of you! I helped raise my brothers to turn them into proper alphas myself! The dirt you wade through every day has no bearing on us!”

As he struggled for air, Rafael considered he had always assumed Lawrence to be the youngest. Just showed the value of assumptions once more, he supposed.

“Then what’s the point?” he croaked.

“Death is easy. This is punishment.”

Lawrence pulled something out of the bag, which Rafael, lying uncomfortably on his side on the mattress, could just barely see. It was a steel rod of some sort, with a rounded tip. Lawrence was smiling and excitement was bright in his eyes.

So it was just the usual, after all, Rafael thought. Just perversion, no matter in how many pretty theories Lawrence had wrapped it up in for himself. There was something oddly comforting about it, even as his heart was hammering in his chest. He liked to understand what was happening.

“Or maybe you just want to sleep with other omegas and this is your way of channelling it, since you’re too good to be so deviant,” he gasped out.

Though he had a feeling Lawrence had other things to do with it in mind, the rod came down hard against Rafael’s knee. Rafael groaned.

“You talk so much,” Lawrence said, dropping the rod on the ground, where it landed with a clatter. Rafael couldn’t see what he was doing, but he assumed that he was retrieving the gag. That was the last of his cards played, then. As long as he could talk, he always had a shot at defending himself, but bound and made mute, he was entirely at Lawrence’s mercy.

The rag was pushed back into his mouth until Rafael chocked on it.

Just as Lawrence secured the seat of the cloth, there was a hoarse scream, somewhere outside the room, above them.

Dead silence followed. Rafael thought he’d pass out from fear. Lawrence had to have a weapon in that bag of his and if he thought he was detected, he might just shoot Rafael. However, Lawrence seemed to have forgotten all about him. After freezing like a startled deer, he jumped suddenly to his feet.

“Paul!” he cried out, as he made for the door.

One of the brothers was called Paul, Rafael decided.

Whatever Lawrence thought he’d do was interrupted by the noise of footsteps in heavy boots, banging against the door. It gave out and swung open and two SWAT officers exploded into the room. Rafael saw them from the corner of his eyes, heard Lawrence’s whimper as he hit the ground. Someone shouted at him not to move. Lawrence was still screaming for Paul.

Rafael, lapsed Catholic that he was, closed his eyes and thanked God. He felt lightheaded with relief. Simultaneously, he wondered if he should move. On his side, he had his backside exposed, but if he turned on his back, away from the smooth, grey wall, it would be his front; besides, he’d be lying on his broken arm. No, he wouldn’t salvage any dignity in this situation, he realised. He would simply be a still, compliant victim, grit his teeth and hope for it all to be over soon.

He felt a little sick now.

A gloved hand curled around his shoulder. As he turned his head, he was looking up at Fin dressed in riot gear. Considering the way SWAT teams got staffed, Rafael thought Fin might be the only beta in the room, which was why they had sent him to check up on the potentially traumatised victim first. Rafael knew procedure, as much as he’d known what would happened to him if the police didn’t find him in time. He looked back at Fin, unable to summon an expression onto his face that wasn’t blank.

“Barba’s alive,” Fin shouted over his shoulder.

“Counsellor!”

That was Carisi, from the way he dragged the last syllable into a long ‘a’ in his thick Staten Island drawl, and Rafael hadn’t ever though he’d ever be so happy to hear it. He craned his neck a little as Carisi sidled up next to him. In the back of the room, he heard Liv talking to a woman whose voice he didn’t recognise, probably one of the SWAT officers. Rollins was standing at his feet now.

“What’s happening?” Rafael managed, looking up at Carisi, who was pale as a sheet, every muscle in his face tight. Behind him, Rafael saw Lawrence being dragged out of the room by SWAT.

“We got one of his brothers upstairs,” Fin explained. “Haven’t found anyone else. Did you notice more people?”

“Only two for sure,” Rafael answered.

“Okay. I’m gonna tell Liv. We’re gonna get you out in just a second, Counsellor. You’ll be okay with these guys?”

“Yes.”

They were alphas, but Rafael knew them too well to be frightened. Hell, it hadn’t even been an alpha who’d attacked him.

When Fin turned around, Carisi moved in closer, running his eyes over Rafael’s body, probably checking for injuries. Rafael bit his tongue. Perhaps he had thought about Carisi seeing him naked a few stray times; not like this, though. Finally, Carisi moved, pulling a knife out of a small pouch at his belt.

“I’m just taking care of the ropes,” he told Rafael, softly, like he was afraid he might scare him if he just brandished the blade. However, Rafael, for his part, felt like he had used up his emotional capacity; there was only bone-deep exhaustion left.

“Can we get a blanket for him or something?” Rollins asked, glancing towards the door. No one seemed to be paying them attention. “I’m gonna head upstairs and get one from the car. Keep an eye on him, Carisi.”

Now it was just him and Carisi, or that was what it felt like, anyway, because he could neither see the others nor could he make out exactly what they were saying. Rafael could smell Carisi’s scent as he leaned closer to make sure not to nick Rafael’s skin as he cut the ropes around his cast and wrist; just like in the hospital, it seemed to seep through the cracks in his being and touch something inside.

Liv moved up next to Carisi.

“Are you gonna ask me the routine questions?” Rafael muttered.

“Not before we haven’t gotten you out,” Carisi said, sounding miserable.

“He didn’t rape me,” Rafael stated, plainly. “I tried to keep him talking. I didn’t know what else to do. Maybe I could have tried to escape, but…”

“No, you did exactly the right thing, Rafael,” Liv said, firmly. It was the first time he remembered that she’d called him by his first name. “There was someone else upstairs with a gun and you’re not in fighting shape.”

Carisi had moved on to his feet and freed them as well. Slowly, Rafael sat up so that his shirt pooled in his lap. He was still wearing that and his suit jacket, although it only highlighted that he _wasn’t_ wearing anything else. It was getting cold, too. Carisi hovered too close to him by his shoulder, but he welcomed his presence. If he hadn’t still had to hold on to his last shred of pride and common sense, maybe he would have leaned against his arm, but he chased away that wisp of a thought.

Rollins returned, carrying a thin blanket, which Rafael took with a nod. Automatically, Carisi reached out to help him unfold it, and Rafael let him.

“What happened to Paul?”

“The guy upstairs? One of the SWAT guys shot him,” Carisi said. “Only his thigh, though, he’s alive. Ambulance will take him.”

“I need to go to the hospital, too. They kept banging my broken arm, I’d like to let the doctor check whether everything is still in place,” he told them. He felt the need to appear reasonable and in control, especially without his pants on in a room full of alphas.

“Of course, we’ll bring you,” Liv said gently. She glanced to the side at the SWAT captain. “Can we get him outside?”

“Yeah, that’s okay,” the woman said, nodding her head. She had lifted the visor of her mask.

Rafael got up on shaking legs. His left leg buckled under him as he tried to put weight on his knee. Carisi grabbed his elbow.

“Barba?” he asked, alarmed.

“He hit me in the knee with an iron rod,” Rafael said between his teeth, clinging to Carisi’s shoulder as he tried to straighten himself. Liv had placed her hand on his other shoulder. He could see Carisi’s face twisting with anger, but he reigned himself in.

“Put your arm around my shoulders, we’ll get you upstairs,” he told Rafael. As he took hold of his hand, his other wrapped around Rafael’s side, squeezing him. Rafael wondered if he should feel repulsed by an alpha encroaching upon him after what had happened, but at the moment, the fear he’d felt for his life outweighed all other sensations. Besides, it was Carisi and apparently, Rafael thought of him more as a guarantee for safety than a threat.

Outside, Carisi sat Rafael down in the car. Officers were going this way and that. A cold, thin sheet of drizzle came down. Because Carisi made no move to get away from the car, Rafael was spared the embarrassment of having to ask him to stay. He saw the way Carisi’s fingers curled around the top of the open door, all the protective alpha, obviously itching to touch Rafael, but knowing better than to actually do it without a reason.

Had things gone a fraction differently, he wouldn’t be here anymore, Rafael considered dispassionately. Lawrence checking the inner pocket of his jacket and finding the phone before he could message the police, the rope not slipping off his wrist, the police cars getting stuck in traffic for just a few minutes and he might have already been dead when they’d arrived.

How much longer would he pontificate on Carisi and his obvious attraction to him, Rafael wondered. His time on the world had almost ended right in that cellar and he kept wavering, probing, practicing. It was difficult to be afraid of your own feelings when you’d just stared death in the eye.

“Carisi,” he said, moving to the side so that the spot on the backseat next to him was empty, “come here for a moment. I have to tell you something.”

“Sure, Counsellor. What is it?”

Carisi slid up next to him, folding his tall figure into the car. Rafael just breathed in his scent for a long moment, which enveloped him like an invisible, second blanket. Then, he put his hand on Carisi’s thigh and leaned in, placing a firm kiss on his soft lips.

Carisi froze in place, making a noise against Rafael’s mouth, his fingers hovering in the air, then settling on Rafael’s arm. He pulled them back almost immediately.

“I – uhm, no, I’m sorry. You’re probably-”

“Yes, Carisi, I’m still in shock, but I’m also in some possession of my mental faculties – surprisingly, considering what I’m doing,” he said, and managed a slim smile. “Do you want to kiss me?”

Overwhelmed, Carisi stared at him. “Well, yes,” he admitted, after a pause.

“Good.”

Rafael kissed him again and this time, after a moment of hesitation, Carisi gave in, put a hand on the back of his head and pulled him closer. It was not a deep, sensual kiss, but it lasted. His other arm wrapped around Rafael’s middle and he was tightly squeezed against Carisi. At that moment, the world was reduced to just the warmth of Carisi’s body, the faint taste of coffee on his lips and his hands keeping Rafael close and safe, and that was all Rafael wanted to know of it for the moment.


	9. Chapter 9

Barba had held on to Sonny with his good hand and when Sonny thought about the moment, he could still call to mind the way Barba’s fingertips had pressed into his shoulder, how his lips had tasted, how the whole of his body had leaned into him. When they had parted, Sonny had pressed his face into Barba’s soft hair, smelled the damp musk of the cellar on him, and tugged him tighter against himself.

Barba had eventually freed himself, but he had looked a little less shaken, a little less pale. On the way to the hospital, where they had had him retell his whole, long conversation with Lawrence King, Sonny had kept close to his side and had seen Rafael turning towards him sometimes, checking whether he was still there. The SVU had brought him home and after Barba had assured Benson about five times that he would be fine on his own and Sonny had lingered for another moment, he had told him the same thing and put his hand on Sonny’s arm as he did.

The next days, Sonny spent most of his time at work staring at the screen getting done significantly less than usual. He wasn’t one to get completely wrapped up in personal stuff like that, but it was difficult enough having Barba’s witness statement in front of him already without the fact that Barba had apparently decided that… well, what _had_ happened?

Whatever it was, Sonny didn’t think he had any right to push it, after what Barba had just gone through. Instead, he wrote text messages to Barba, captured at home for the rest of the week by doctor’s orders, every day. Usually once in the morning, once in the evening at least, ‘are you okay’ or ‘how is it going?’ or ‘you need any help?’ – just in case.

Barba didn’t need any help, it seemed, but he always wrote back that he was doing fine, and never that Sonny was supposed to stop spamming him, so that was something; at the very least the few words before going to bed kept Sonny’s nerves from getting tight as a violin’s strings.

Thursday afternoon, Rollins put a thin stack of paper on his desk with the words: “Hey, you up for a drink after work, Carisi?”

Confused, he looked up from the data he was compiling into a folder for Howe.

“Uh, yeah. Good idea.”

He could really use alcohol, he decided.

They found themselves in a small bar not far from the station, sitting on slightly scuffed seats in a corner booth, two beers on the sticky table in front of them.

“You’ve seen Howe’s interview?” Sonny asked, glancing up at a TV screen in the corner, where a news channel was circling through the events of the day on mute.

“Uh-huh. And the reactions to it. Five people dead and we’ve got the moralisers all over TV like there’s nothing more important going on right now than pushing their agendas. Politics…” Rollins scoffed.

“The people who complain about Lawrence King sound a lot _like_ him, from what Barba told us. All that stuff about omegas being ruined by today’s society,” Sonny said into his beer.

“Howe was an ass to drop Barba’s name, too. Is he getting bothered by reporters a lot?”

“He said he just doesn’t answer his phone now when he can’t see a caller ID,” Sonny said. He’d asked Barba the same question a couple days ago.

“Of course you’d know…”

It was too late that Sonny realised he’d stepped into a trap. Raising his gaze from his beer, he looked at Rollins and found her eyes narrowed, like he was sitting at the other side of an interrogation room table.

“I make sure he’s okay, you know? We just write,” Sonny said, too hasty.

“Yeah, I’m sure you do,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Come on, Carisi, off the record – what’s going on with you and Barba?”

“Why do you ask?” Sonny deflected.

“Okay, let’s start with the fact that after the kidnapping, I wanted to bring Barba his underwear, since we didn’t need it for evidence, and I saw the two of you making out in the back of a police car.”

Sonny’s heart dropped into his pants. Yeah, okay, he couldn’t talk his way out of that one. He took a sip of his beer, stalling, hoping against hope he could think of an excuse regardless.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, finally. “I don’t know what’s going on. I mean, he’s great, I like him and all.”

“I gathered that,” Rollins muttered.

“Haha.” Had he been that obvious? Rollins did know him pretty well, though, and she had a front row seat to all their interactions at work. “I just don’t know what Barba thinks about me.”

Rollins raised a brow at him.

“Well, _I_ know that his reaction to going through a whole lot of hell was to cuddle up to you. You’re a detective, right?”

Frowning, Sonny took another gulp of beer. It was what he wanted to believe, but he preferred to tread carefully around Barba.

“I mean, with everything that had happened, he was all kinds of messed up, I think. Might just be an instinct to grab an alpha, you know?”

“There was a whole room full of alphas, some of which he knows pretty well, and yet he still ended up kissing _you_.” Rollins shook her head. “You have a giant crush on him and Barba seems to have found the one person on planet earth he can smile at. I’m not saying you should try to drag him to bed while he’s recovering from this disaster, but why don’t you ever invite him out for a drink or something?”

Sometimes, you really noticed that Rollins was from way in the South, where alphas were stereotypically said to be a bit more old-fashioned still. She wasn’t insensitive or anything, but Sonny could only imagine she’d have asked Barba straight-out whether she had a chance with him by the time they were building bookcases and eating sushi in his apartment. Hell, most people probably would’ve. Sonny supposed he was just afraid of the ‘no’ that seemed so inevitable, considering how icy Barba used to be.

“He’s hard to understand,” Sonny said.

“Not from where I’m sitting.” Rollins lifted her hand. “But it’s your deal, I won’t get involved in it. It’s just a little painful to see you pining so much.”

“I’m not _pining_ ,” Sonny protested.

Instead of answering, Rollins grinned and pointed at her empty glass.

“I’m getting another one. You too?”

“Yeah, for sure.”

Thankfully, Rollins was trustworthy. If Barba ever heard about this conversation, Sonny was sure his chances would evaporate. He had a feeling the man didn’t like to have his love life discussed. However, there was relief in finally having been able to talk it over with someone. Yeah, he had a crush on Barba. He was in love with Barba. Maybe it was a bad decision, but it was true, anyway.

When Rollins was off to the bar, Sonny pulled his phone from his pocket and saw the answer to his latest message.

_Yes, I survive, although even a few attempts to watch daytime TV were a serious threat on my mental integrity. I’m going to come by the station tomorrow. Will you be at work around 11 am?_

Sonny typed his answer quickly.

_Should be at my desk, yeah._

The next message came shortly afterwards.

_I’m looking forward to meeting you, then._

When Rollins returned, Sonny still hadn’t stopped smiling.

-

“Are you sure you want to go to court again so early?”

Although Sonny was sure Benson was just looking out for Barba and he suspected Barba knew it, too, the A.D.A. wiped her comment away with a movement of his hand like he was getting rid of a speck of dirt on a window.

“If we don’t take this new court date, it’ll probably be months before we get another one. I do not want to let that poor woman wait that long again.”

“Neither do I – if you think you can do it.”

“It’s my job, I can probably handle it,” Barba said, curtly.

As he made his way from the door to her office to Sonny’s desk, Sonny saw Benson take a deep breath and shake her head before she turned away.

Barba stopped by Sonny’s side.

“Carisi, I have a question regarding the case. Do you have time?”

“Sure.”

From an empty desk close-by, Barba pulled up a chair and sat down. He looked quite worn, Sonny thought, with deep circles under his eyes and sallow skin. He might have lost a few pounds, too, which was alarming, considering it had only been a week since he’d last seen him.

“Did Lawrence King say why he picked me? That was a risky move. You were already targeting someone in his family.”

“A really stupid idea,” Sonny agreed. “Although he said since the media reported on you getting hurt, you had drawn a lot of attention, anyway, and you did fit the profile.”

“That’s true,” Barba admitted.

“Personally, I don’t think he really cared about that, though. I think you provoked him by being around. He couldn’t let it be, even if it was risky, because it hit so close to home.”

“And Jason King really had nothing to do with it all?”

“Nothing we can prove – not on the other brother, either. Only Paul seems to have known. He helped Lawrence get rid of the bodies, too.”

Barba nodded his head.

“I think he was telling the truth about Jason’s involvement,” he said, slowly. “Granted, he could have just been protecting him, but even if Jason King was part of it, I think Lawrence was definitely the ring leader of this little operation. Otherwise, he is one hell of an actor.”

He stared at the desk, lost in thought. The moment of silence stretched on.

“I know that’s personal, but are you seeing a therapist after all this?” Sonny asked, slowly. “It must be rough.”

“When has a question being personal ever stopped you, Carisi? No,” Barba said. “That’d just be another thing the D.A. could hold against me. I would go, but in reality, I don’t have the luxury. Someone would find out and it’d be counted as a weakness.”

“Okay, but – look, Counsellor, this isn’t about your career, this is about your health. It’s not gonna be any good getting a promotion or something if you have a nervous breakdown right afterwards.”

“Thank you, Dr. Carisi,” Barba said impatiently, rising from his chair. “This is all I wanted to know about the case.”

The omega was about to leave, but Sonny found himself get up and taking hold of his elbow. He didn’t know if he had the right to do that – probably not –, but he didn’t care.

“I’m worried about you,” he said.

“So you want me to give up on all my aspirations and curl up at home so _you_ will feel better?” Barba asked, his expression barely hiding his fury. However, he did stay put. “Even Liv is telling me I should take it easy for a while and consider working a different unit. Are you going to start, too?”

“She’s not doing it to annoy you, you know that, right?”

“It doesn’t matter _why_ she’s doing it, it still means that the only people who were on my side are not any longer, so my chances of ever leaving Tax Fraud again are slowly growing non-existent. Whichever D.A.s office I will go to, the result they’ll take from all of this is that they’ll say they tried putting me with a more dangerous unit and it didn’t work.”

Barba was close to snapping the pencil he’d picked up from Sonny’s desk in half. Though he used a cold, matter-of-fact tone, Sonny could feel the desperation lurking underneath.

“Hey, that’s not true, not about Liv or me. We know you’re good. And you can’t give up – you think I wanna be stuck with Howe for the next few years?”

“You could finish your bar exam – _if_ you can – and have my job while I search for something more appropriate for an omega. Maybe I could be a kindergarten teacher, I’m sure _that’s_ completely suited to my temperament,” Barba muttered. “Unless, of course, the stress would be just too much for my frail nature.”

It would have been funny to see Barba sulk if Sonny didn’t know that this meant everything to him and he was about to lose it. Glancing around to check that no one was paying them attention, he reached out to squeeze Barba’s shoulder, his thumb briefly brushing up against his neck.

“I have your back, Counsellor. I promise. If you still wanna do this, I know you can, and if you need my help, you just gotta ask. I’m just worried you’re pushing yourself too much. You can still work your way up to D.A. in a few weeks’ time, right?” he joked, smiling.

Barba didn’t say anything, but he kept his green, thoughtful eyes on Sonny until he started to fidget under the intense gaze and dropped his hand.


	10. Chapter 10

If one was determined to find the good side of being kidnapped by a rapist-murderer, then Rafael’s was definitely that Howe was now quite determined to work with him on this case. Rafael was both a colleague but also the prime witness. Though he resisted being paraded around in the media as Howe wanted it, he was very eager to offer him a hand at all other stages of the process. He started as soon as he was allowed to enter his office again, after a week at home on his doctor’s orders, who wanted to make sure his arm, now past its second surgery, would get a bit of a chance to mend. Howe, who didn’t like paperwork very much, was quite happy to let Rafael go through a lot of the menial, fine-print stuff; after all, he had started out as advisor on the case, Howe had said. Though it wasn’t work that could really be officially honoured – Rafael shouldn’t have been prosecuting his own case –, letting Howe know he could depend on him could only work in his favour in the long run, Rafael had decided.

His other focus, next to the trial he’d missed and which would be repeated in two weeks’ time, was the pet store case. The whole matter still seemed exceedingly pointless to him, but he knew that slacking off would only make him look bad, or worse, affected by the attack. If he couldn’t work the unit he wanted to, he would excel at whatever else he was handed. It was the only way not to fall behind, Rafael knew, and to silently defend himself against voices that would call him completely unsuited for the job of A.D.A..

Besides, the fact that work from the Tax Crimes Unit had piled up on his desk when he returned to the office allowed Rafael to give his attention to something at least marginally useful, which did endear him to it in a way nothing else so far had. At night, he mostly stared at the ceiling or lost himself in confusing dreams which he woke from feeling queasy, and drenched in sweat. Because he’d been grabbed right in front of the door to his house, he didn’t ever feel comfortable going outside, although he forced himself to do it anyway. Balance sheets suddenly were a good thing to think about.

Another aggravating factor of his private life that he would gladly stifle with work was his relationship to Carisi, which grew stranger with each passing day. After the rescue, before the kiss in the car and during the subsequent hospital visit, Carisi had hovered around him as if he’d been Rafael’s mate for years. However, as soon as the pressure was off, there was no attempt to get closer. Rafael wondered if he was supposed to take from this that Carisi didn’t want it to go further, but Carisi wasn’t pushing him away, either, rather keeping contact through shallower means such as texts.

Perhaps Carisi didn’t yet know Rafael was interested at least to explore whatever it was that existed between them; maybe he didn’t think Rafael would want to right on the heels of what had just happened, which would be understandable. However, Rafael didn’t think one could make one’s intentions much clearer than he had with his tongue in Carisi’s mouth.

He pushed the thought aside at first, trying to ignore it, until he woke up one Friday morning and realised he hadn’t kept an eye on the calendar and his knees (one still an ugly shade of green, recovering from the contusion) were pudding, his pyjama pants were damp and his mind had trouble with sentences exceeding ten words. With everything that had happened, he had forgotten his most favourite time of the month.

It quickly surfaced that general paranoia and the feeling of being completely out of control did not mix well. To be fair, the sensation of the heat had been one he disliked even at the best of times; it was like a voracious black hole that sucked in all reason and sense until only some bare-bones version of himself remained, barely an animal, filled with nothing but desperation and want.

Rafael found himself sitting with his back to the wall, cursing the feeling of vulnerability, his nerves too tightly strung to attempt masturbating, his biological need too great to let him focus on anything else but the thought of sex.

An idea solidified in his head around lunchtime, when he tried to eat while his body refused to feel hunger. Rafael had noticed, twice now, that it was quite difficult for him to be scared of Sonny Carisi; and in the car, it had seemed to be true that it was easier not to be scared _around_ him, too. It would be nice to have someone here for the purpose of protecting him against his own delusions, as well as for other uses which an alpha undoubtedly had in this situation. After all, Rafael could not easily deny to himself anymore that his own feelings for Carisi had long passed dislike, glided over neutral and settled on something much too soft and powerful at the same time.

At least if he attempted to ask him over, he would finally have his answer of what in God’s name Carisi was doing in this relationship.

Rafael selected the number on his phone and waited, uncomfortably shifting on his chair. His clothes were too warm. The air seemed stuffy. Sweat had plastered his shirt against his back.

“Carisi?”

“Barba,” Rafael said, feeling intensely stupid because his cock had given a little twitch at just the sound of Carisi’s voice. The heat really did not let him keep a shred of self-respect.

“Hey, Counsellor. You doing okay?”

“That depends on your definition.” Rafael knew his voice had to sound hoarse. He’d have to get this over quickly. He could barely follow the conversation as it had gone now. “I’m in heat,” he added.

“Oh.”

Carisi didn’t seem to know what to do with that information and Barba wanted to reach through the phone to grab him and shake him. What omegas in heat who had previously kissed him called him to casually inform him about the state of their heat cycle?

“Are you at home? You’re safe, right?” Carisi added.

The concern would have been charming, at least, if Rafael’s brain hadn’t mostly retreated onto its lizard origins.

“Locked up in my apartment, yes,” he said, forcing his voice to remain calm. “Do you want to join me?”

There was silence. “You mean to, like, help?”

“No, Carisi, to build another bookcase. What do you think?” Rafael muttered, his thread of patience finally torn.

“Right. Yeah. I, I gotta finish work, but I’ll head right over the second I can get out of here.”

Confusion made room for very badly veiled excitement in Carisi’s voice.

“You need me to bring anything else? You got enough food?”

Rafael glanced at the apple he had taken a bite out off and then discarded.

“That’s really a secondary concern for me right now,” he said, and managed to squeeze in a little sarcasm with the breathlessness.

“Christ…”

Well, at least Carisi sounded like he might have to deal with an embarrassing problem under his desk right now. Rafael did rather enjoy it when he could repay alphas for not having to go through this.

“I’ll see you soon, Carisi.”

“Yeah, you can count on it, Counsellor.”

-

When the doorbell rang, it was four in the afternoon and Rafael was close to going out of his mind. It was hardly his first heat without an alpha and they were always painful and unfulfilling, but the combination of anticipation and being constantly on edge with diluted fear had left him pacing the rooms of his house liked a caged animal.

After he had asked Carisi up through the intercom, he attempted to compose himself, tugging at his jeans, which felt alien on his burning skin, and straightening the button-up shirt that he wanted to rip off. He heard Carisi’s hasty steps down the hallway, then a knock on his door.

“Sonny,” Carisi said, through the wood.

Rafael opened the door and braced himself with a hand on the wall. Meeting an alpha during the heat was what he imagined it felt like to be a piece of iron faced with a magnet. Carisi smelled amazing and he looked great, in a rumpled suit, with his hair blown slightly array. He was carrying a couple of plastic bags which he dropped under Rafael’s coat rack.

“Oh God, Counsellor,” Carisi managed. His strained voice broke into a choked, desperate laugh.

Rafael stepped backwards, allowing him in. There was a strange moment as Carisi pulled off his shoes and then stood before him, as if he wasn’t sure where to start, but finally biology kicked in and he leaned in close, taking in the scent at the crook of Rafael’s neck, and Rafael let out a shuddering breath.

“Sorry for making you wait, Counsellor,” Carisi murmured. His lips brushed Rafael’s neck.

“Sonny, unless it does something for you, can you call me Rafael when you are about to sleep with me?” Rafael asked. God, this man was hopeless.

Carisi smiled, leaning back.

“Hey, I think you’re the first one around the SVU to actually call me Sonny. Who’d have thought it’d be you?”

His long fingers ran up under Rafael’s shirt. When their skin made contact, Rafael felt like he’d grabbed onto a live wire. He cringed backwards, gasping out.

Sonny’s smile dropped off his face.

“Counsellor?!”

“What did I _just_ tell you about my name?” Rafael managed, raising his brows at him as he leaned against the wall. It was an attempt to chase the fear out of Carisi’s blue eyes. “I’m a bit – tightly wound.” His voice was unsteady. Carisi’s touch had left him feeling like every fibre of his every muscle was pulled taut. “We might have to start slow.”

Carisi had to calm himself with a breath, but he nodded his head, looking relieved.

“Okay, then let’s take the edge off.”

Gently, he took hold of Rafael’s sides, above the shirt this time, pressing him up against the wall. As he did so, he pushed his thigh between Rafael’s legs, rubbing against his cock. Rafael grabbed on to him hard with his one available hand as his knees buckled, but Carisi held him up.

“I got you, Raf,” he muttered against his ear and his voice spread out over Rafael’s nervous system, an impulse that made him shiver like leaves in the wind. Helplessly, he rutted against Carisi’s thigh, breathing in his scent, and letting his head fall back against the wall while Carisi sucked his neck, resting his mouth just above the pulse point. He pushed against Rafael and then gave him a greedy kiss that rocked Rafael’s body, but he kept his hands firmly above the waistline.

The orgasm wasn’t very fun; his body felt like it cramped. However, once it was over, Rafael could breath freely again and his fingers uncurled from the scruff of Carisi’s suit jacket, hurting with the force with which they had clawed into the fabric. He stared against the ceiling.

“You okay?” Carisi asked, nosing at his neck. “You’re not usually so quiet.”

“I think I am just so shocked you seem rather competent at this,” Rafael said. “Of course, this is possibly the most undignified way you could have chosen to get me off.”

“You’re not my first omega, you know,” Carisi said, snickering. “‘sides, you’re not gonna need those pants this weekend.”

Rafael rolled his eyes at him, but he knew Carisi was right. It was only his own pride that had kept him moderately dressed, but the clothes would stay off if Carisi really knew what he was doing. Now that his head had momentarily cleared he moved to the living room, Carisi following after him.

“Sit,” Rafael said.

To his surprise, Carisi did. It wasn’t often that an alpha would follow Rafael’s commands at all, but during the heat, when they were usually itching just to get their hands on him? Not that Carisi didn’t look eager perching on his sofa, the fabric of his suit pants strained and following Rafael’s every move with his gaze as he went to draw the curtains before pulling off his pants, his briefs, and his shirt, but he stayed put.

Rafael stood in the middle of the room, naked. After getting off by humping someone’s leg like an unruly dog, Rafael supposed the time for modesty had passed. During the heat, there really was never much reason to worry. The scent would do to draw Carisi to him what his body couldn’t; and perhaps, if he thought back to his gift of Hershey’s kisses, the fact that he was softer than him didn’t bother Carisi so much, anyway. Rafael was experienced enough to know that ideals were one thing and the preferences of real people another.

“Can I get up now, please?” Carisi joked, though it sounded rather earnest despite the grin.

“No.”

Rafael strode over and, as he lowered himself to his knees, pushed Carisi’s thighs apart. He could see that he already had had an effect on him and the second he closed in, Carisi reached out to touch his hair and the back of his neck, tugging his cheek against his thigh as Rafael mouthed at him through his trousers. He could feel a familiar wetness between his legs just from the slight touch, which he found himself leaning into in the instinctive way of a cat being scratched behind the ears.

He would have liked to tease and cajole Carisi a bit, but most of his brain was still being used to propel him to get his hands on one part only. Unceremoniously, he unzipped his pants and pulled his cock out, licking it with slow, languid laps. Carisi made a choked noise.

It was possible, for a while, as he fought against his own instinct to nuzzle into Carisi and keen for his attention, to keep a shred of control that Rafael was so loath to give up. Eventually, he always did, of course. Nature dictated it and his partners were usually quite pleased to have finally conquered the resistant omega. Accordingly, it felt like surrender to Rafael, and he had always hated losing. That was one of the reasons he had rather suffered through the heats on his own for the last few years.

For now, however, Carisi was moaning and holding on to his shoulders and happily allowing him to do as he pleased. Rafael sucked him deep into his mouth and turned his eyes upwards to meet Carisi’s gaze. The alpha was watching him with rapt attention. It looked a bit like the way he sometimes stared at him in court. Even with his mouth full, Rafael had to smile.

He was just dragging his mouth downwards again when Carisi pulled him off and up, kissing him, directionless, on the mouth and the cheek and the head.

“I want to fuck you, please,” he whispered in Rafael’s ear.

Mutely, Rafael nodded his head.

With shaking legs, he brought him into the bedroom and, once Carisi had sat down on the bed, Rafael used the chance to crawl over him, directing him to lie back by pushing against his chest. He was ready to go again; he would be until Sunday afternoon, Rafael guessed, as he shivered under the feeling of Carisi’s hands greedily running over his body.

“You’re really handsome,” Carisi said, like he couldn’t keep it in anymore.

“If you unbutton your shirt, maybe I can return the compliment,” Rafael managed. He had taken a condom from the bedside table drawer, pulled it over Carisi’s cock and was already positioning himself.

Carisi was halfway done with his shirt when Rafael sank down on him. He gasped, his fingers flying back to Rafael’s hips to dig them in tightly. It would have been so easy to give in and let those broad, thin-fingered hands take over, but Rafael squared his legs, stayed his ground, forced his own rhythm. It was exhausting, working against himself like that; he felt the set of his shoulders grow tighter, his good hand curl into a fist.

Then, Carisi thrust upwards and Rafael crumbled. His elbow buckled and he collapsed forward, almost knocking their foreheads together. With admirable presence of mind, Carisi moved his arm, keeping him from landing on his broken arm.

“Careful, Cou… Rafael. You okay?”

Rafael wanted to shake his head. His spine felt like a rubber hose.

“Yes.”

“Wait, I’ll…”

And before he could protest, Carisi had sat up and flipped them so that Rafael found himself on his back, looking up at his face with its smile and red cheeks and ruffled hair.

“Way more comfortable, right?” Carisi declared.

He wasn’t wrong about that. Carisi pushed into him and stars exploded in his head. Rafael’s legs automatically spread wider and Carisi sank all the way in, easily welcomed by Rafael’s wet, slack body.

Rafael held on as Carisi began moving, his broken arm on the mattress. Carisi’s mouth was constantly at his neck, taking in his scent, and then he clamped his teeth over the muscle connecting his neck and shoulder as his movements grew more erratic. It was a sudden, unexpected burst of dominance that had Rafael whimper in the back of his throat. His head lolled back and Carisi saw his chance and moved his mouth, grazing his teeth over Rafael’s exposed throat before he bit his shoulder hard.

It should have been brutal, but Carisi also had his hand entangled with Rafael’s and he was nuzzling his nose against his jaw and when he came, he was whispering Rafael’s name in his ear.

Rafael wasn’t far behind, his head spinning, breath shuddering. He collapsed against the bed, defeated, and allowed Carisi to lap at the teeth marks he had left on him. He expected smugness as he looked over, but all he got was a sheepish smile.

“Sorry, I broke the skin here,” Carisi said, gently brushing his thumb over the red marks. As he spoke, Rafael saw a little blood on his teeth.

“That had better have been an accident. I’m not into that sort of thing,” he said, flatly, voice failing. Having sex during the heat was like getting out of a searing hot bath to be greeted by tropically humid summer air; not altogether a relief, but not quite as painful. Soon enough, however, Rafael knew he’d be under again.

Again, Carisi leaned down to rub against him. He reminded Rafael of a particularly affectionate and heavy dog. Of course, what drove Carisi’s especially cuddly behaviour was probably the fact that he needed to have Rafael marked exclusively with his own scent or he’d be driven to distraction every minute they spend together this weekend.

It wasn’t the worst feeling in the world.

Carisi sat back, pulling out and leaving Rafael to feel empty in every way. Carisi, too, seemed to have a problem to separate himself; it was the normal draw of the heat.

“I’ll be straight back,” he said, before jumping up, finally getting rid of the half-open clothes he was still wearing, revealing his lanky, toned body underneath. Rafael tried to keep his breath steady. He was still a little too proud to beg for him to come back right away. Instead, he cleaned himself with a tissue from the nightstand.

A minute later, Carisi returned with a bottle of water and a sandwich in a bakery paper bag.

“I told you on the phone, I’m not hungry.”

“I know, that sort of seems to switch off during the heat, huh? But you still gotta eat.”

It was true that he hadn’t really had food since last night’s dinner. Slowly, he reached out for the sandwich.

“That’s what is in those plastic bags?”

“Yeah, I thought I’d best stock up, since I’ll probably be here all weekend.”

There was still a little doubt in his voice.

“I don’t think anyone else is going to want me this time around, now that you’ve dented the goods,” Rafael pointed out, tapping his shoulder with the bite mark. It was as much reassurance as he was willing to give, but he was rewarded with a bright, happy grin. Carisi pulled him closer, his face once more against Rafael.

“You smell so good,” he muttered, apologetically, pressing his nose into Rafael’s hair.

“You mean I smell like you, now that you’ve marked me with your scent?”

All he got was a little chuckle and the open water bottle. Carisi massaged the spot between Rafael’s shoulder blades.

“You still seemed kinda tense, though. Want me to rub your back?”

As far as alphas went, Rafael had to admit, as he noticed how dry his throat had been when he took a sip of water, Carisi was one of the more bearable ones.


	11. Chapter 11

When Sonny left for home after the weekend with Rafael, he felt like he’d swallowed the sun. In even his most detailed fantasies, he couldn’t have imagined what being with Rafael would actually be like. At first, admittedly, Rafael had been a bit stiff, but it only took until the first night to find their rhythm and it was just about the greatest thing from then on. He’d feared Rafael would move away from him between their encounters, but they gravitated naturally together through the force of the heat, and it wasn’t awkward at all. Rafael still mocked and teased and needled, but he did it while leaning into Sonny’s side. Saturday evening, Sonny had fetched food at the Chinese take-out place down the street; with his clothes hastily thrown on, his hair standing in all directions, and still smelling of heat and Rafael, he had gotten a couple bemused glances and felt as embarrassed and stupidly proud as a teenager buying his first pack of condoms.

With Rafael’s broken arm, things had been a little tricky, but Sonny had actually enjoyed finding positions to make it work. Mostly, Rafael had been climbing onto his lap or dragged him down onto the bed, lying back so Sonny could wrap Rafael’s legs around his waist. He’d been almost insatiable, only napping even at night, getting Sonny up every couple of hours, but it was very hard to say no when Rafael Barba was purring against your neck. When Sonny commented on how active he was, Rafael had said, off-handedly, that he hadn’t had an alpha in quite a while.

But he had had Sonny because – well, he liked Sonny, right? When they’d been watching mindless TV while relaxing Saturday after dinner, Rafael had had his head in Sonny’s lap. And when Sonny had used a break in their activities Sunday morning to revise one of his essays for school, which he had to hand in on Tuesday, Rafael had actually sat down with him and used his hour or so of more lucid thoughts to explain the intricacies of New York custody laws to him.

“I couldn’t let your essay stand like that,” he’d told Sonny when he’ thanked him. “It offended me.”

However, that had just been the obligatory barb because while reading through it, he’d actually complimented Sonny’s reasoning a couple of times.

His interest in Sonny between their time in bed together, more than even the fact that he’d been called over, told him that Rafael must’ve been pretty serious about the whole thing. Obviously he was picky when it came to alphas, but he’d let Sonny in, every way, and he hadn’t even seriously complained about the marks that Sonny had left all over him, making it clear whose property he was.

In his head, Sonny carefully tried out calling Rafael his mate.

Of course, Rafael was busy preparing for the court date he had missed being kidnapped. Because of all the media attention the case had garnered, Howe was spending a lot of time prepping him as a witness, too (although Sonny suspected the prepping might go another way round, from a snippet of a phone conversation he’d accidentally eavesdropped on during the weekend), so it didn’t surprise Sonny that he heard nothing from Rafael for the next couple of days. He texted him Tuesday evening to tell him he’d handed in the essay Rafael had helped out with.

_Fordham Law has much to look forward to, now that you’ve started taking your studies seriously._

Sonny had expected a sarcastic answer, that was kind of Rafael’s thing, but this one was a little impersonal, more like the stuff he’d gotten way in the beginning, before Rafael had actually gotten to know him. Or, he thought to himself, maybe Rafael just had a lot on his mind and Sonny was reading too much into things. He put the phone down on his cluttered couch table and shook his head. No point in agonising over a text like a teenager. He’d just ask him in person the next time they met.

-

When Rafael came into the police station with Howe later that week, Sonny wanted to use his chance, but Rafael only nodded to him and hurried into Benson’s office. Though Sonny only got up once to fetch a coffee a little later, Rafael somehow managed to escape him in that time without a goodbye. Sonny wrote him ‘goodnight’ that evening and didn’t get an answer.

Probably busy, he told himself, again.

The Ramirez trial on Friday went as good as it could have gone. Rafael, despite his broken arm, was as suave as ever before the stand and always had a leg up on the defence throughout the trial. He managed to discredit their prime witness by tripping him up into saying that he had been drunk on the evening he was giving an alibi for and after just under an hour, the jury had decided on rape in the first degree and a prison sentence.

After court, Sonny finally managed to get Rafael all alone. He was typing away on his Blackberry on a small bench in front of the courthouse in the light of the golden autumn afternoon sun. Carisi fell down next to him, and Rafael looked up, frowning a little.

“Good job in there. You wanna go celebrate?” Sonny asked.

“Are you all going to get a drink?”

“No, but I thought the two of us could.”

Rafael considered him. His face was as carefully guarded as it had been in court.

“Why?” he asked, as coolly as if the question came as a total surprise and, in fact, Sonny was a bit ridiculous for coming up with it.

Sonny felt his stomach ball itself up.

“What do you mean? We’re…”

He floundered.

“What?” Rafael asked, eyebrows shooting up. “Dating?”

Out of Rafael’s mouth, it sounded like another completely unreasonable proposition. Sonny felt ashamed, and then petulant. As much as Rafael made it sound like that, no, he hadn’t been imagining that Rafael had comfortably laid in his arms last weekend, not just for sex, but also relaxing, half-asleep, accepting kisses, allowing Sonny to go on about his family and his job.

“Yeah,” he said, confrontationally. “Maybe. Why not? I mean, come on, Rafael-”

“Barba. We’re in public.”

That stung, too, even if Sonny could see the logic of it.

“Fine,” he snapped. “But you like me, right? And I like you.”

“We had fun,” Rafael said, glancing to the side, breaking eye contact for the first time. “Don’t get carried away. You’re over-interpreting the feelings the contact high of the heat wake in an alpha.”

“I’m not sixteen years old,” Sonny argued.

“Could have fooled me.”

When Sonny just kept looking at him, Rafael squared his shoulders.

“What would be the point, Carisi?” he asked.

Sonny found himself a bit taken aback by the anger in his voice. “What do you mean?”

“What, beyond the heat, can we really share? Are you ever seriously, publically going to be with me? Introduce a working omega, 12 years older than you, who won’t marry and, in a few years, might be too old to have children, to your deeply traditional, Catholic family that you’re so attached to?” Rafael got up. “This has no future. Have a nice weekend, Detective.”

And with that, Rafael was up and walking away, before Sonny could recover from the verbal blow. He jumped to his feet as soon as he had shaken the shock off, but by that time Rafael had threaded between the throngs of people that were passing by and was lost.

-

“What’s going on now?”

Going to get drunk with Rollins was apparently becoming a habit now. Theoretically, that was a good thing because she was a great buddy and Sonny was happy that she’d warmed up to him – in the beginning, he knew, she hadn’t been his biggest fan. However, his mood was so down it was basically buried into the earth today, and even two glasses of whiskey hadn’t been able to fix that yet. He stayed silent.

“Did you fail an exam or something?”

Sonny grinned mournfully because that was almost what it felt like. Rafael had extended a hand and given him a chance to prove himself, Sonny was sure, because he couldn’t imagine that he invited just anyone over for a quick tryst; and somewhere, somehow, sometime during the weekend, Sonny had blown it.

“It’s about Rafael,” he admitted.

“Rafael, huh?”

“Yeah, but don’t let him hear I called him by his first name,” Sonny grumbled into his glass. “He might throw a fit.”

“Can you start from the beginning?”

Glancing over his shoulder, Sonny made sure that the other guests were involved in their own conversations. Likely enough, no one here even knew or cared who any of them were, but he couldn’t imagine Rafael wanted it to be public knowledge he’d taken an alpha home. He’d probably bite Sonny’s head off just for telling Rollins.

“You gotta keep this to yourself.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Rollins said, gesturing at him to continue.

“Rafael asked me to come over last weekend. You know, for his heat.”

Rollins lowered her glass. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously.”

For a moment, Rollins just sat there in silence. “I can’t even imagine Barba in heat,” she said, finally, shaking her head, like she’d tried to recall a bizarre image from a dream.

Sonny could, and had, many times even before that weekend.

“So did something go wrong?” Rollins prodded.

“No! That’s the thing. Well, I mean, I don’t _think_ it did. It was great.” It was the alcohol that shifted Sonny quite rapidly from indignant to melancholic. “We didn’t just sleep together, he helped me with homework and we talked and – he even called me ‘alpha’, once, when I woke him up climbing out the bed.”

Rafael had been sleep-addled, asking him where he was off to, but smiling when Sonny told him he was just going to the bathroom, sinking back to sleep.

“Jesus, _please_ don’t tell Barba you told me that. This is probably more dangerous to know than most state secrets.”

Sonny nodded his head. It was really personal in a way Rafael didn’t allow a lot of people to see. So why the hell would he open up like that and then snap right back shut?

“Shouldn’t you be happy, then?”

“Yeah, you’d think, but he’s avoiding me now. Told me I wasn’t really gonna date him anyway because he’s too old and I wouldn’t want my family to know I was going out with someone like him.” Sonny emptied his glass. “Why does he think I’m such an ass? I’ve never said any of that!”

“You should be asking him that,” Rollins said. “I don’t think it’s really a bad sign, to be honest.”

Sonny huffed an unamused laugh. “How’s that?”

“Sounds like he’s afraid he’ll get attached and you’ll dump him,” Rollins answered, with a shrug.

Pickled in alcohol as it was at the moment, Sonny’s brain needed a moment to catch up with that argument; however, when he had, he couldn’t deny there was a bit of logic to it. The flicker of hope that had been stomped out so effectively by Rafael this afternoon dared to shimmer a little brighter again.

-

It was half past ten when he made his way out of the bar and he was waiting for the subway when he made a snap decision. Rafael had basically been the one to make all the steps in their relationship – invited him to their first date, if you wanted to call building a bookcase that, initiated the first kiss, asked Sonny over for his heat – and maybe it had been smart to let it happen that way because Rafael seemed to be a cautious man. However, if he was going to chicken out now, then Sonny couldn’t simply keep waiting for him to come around. He needed an answer, one way or another; although, as Sonny considered with his heart in his throat, selecting Rafael’s number in his contacts, he really would prefer one outcome over the other.

“Hey, Counsellor,” he said, when Rafael picked up the phone.

“What is it, Carisi?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“It seems to me that’s what you’re doing at the moment,” Rafael drawled.

“Yeah, funny. I mean, I want to talk to you about us. ‘cause you really didn’t even give me a chance to respond, you just ran away.”

“I didn’t ‘run away’, I just had other things to do today,” Rafael said, annoyance shifting into his voice.

Sonny didn’t let himself be distracted by the opportunity for a fight. He had his goal and he could be like a dog with a bone when he had locked on, especially when he was drunk.

“I still want to talk to you, in person. I think I deserve that much.”

His doggedness seemed to stagger Rafael a bit. There was a silence at the other end of the line.

“Fine,” Rafael said. “This weekend is full, but we can meet Monday.”

“Okay. I’m looking forward to it, Rafael.”

Apparently, Rafael was so surprised about Sonny’s insistence that he forgot to complain about the name. That cheered Sonny up a little.


	12. Chapter 12

Rafael was used to the fluidity of his schedule, filled with police officers bursting his doors down, colleagues requesting last-minute assistance and, lately, Howe meticulously planning a case that had become open-and-shut after Lawrence’s full confession, but that he was determined to come out of looking very smart. It was this case which kept Rafael from his meeting with Carisi and, he realised as he wrote his text, he felt worse about that than he had convinced himself he would.

In truth, he knew that he was not treating the man at all fairly. What he had said was likely right; even if Carisi didn’t realise it yet, being public with Rafael would open him up to a lot of mockery from people all around and pressure from his family, if his stories were anything to go by – things that would eventually push him away, realistically seen. However, Carisi could seem so convincing in his affection that Rafael could almost, _almost_ believe that maybe there was a chance.

The truth was, Rafael was scared. He had wanted clarity in their relationship and when he had gotten it, he’d ran, just as Carisi had said. He hadn’t spent a heat with an alpha in years, but he remembered, clearly, that it had rarely been that – comfortable. Carisi was easy to be around and easy to give up to. Somehow, he had managed the mental balancing act of throwing Rafael over the side of the bed and holding his neck clamped between his teeth until Rafael’s knees buckled and he was making embarrassing noises, and sitting there half an hour later eagerly accepting Rafael’s authority on custody law. If he respected Rafael less afterwards, he was smart enough to hide the fact. While a trained police officer with good reason to protect him had been cuddling up to him, the nightmares had receded, too, and what little sleep Rafael had gotten during the heat had been deep and still and, if disturbed by unbidden images, quickly calmed by refocusing on Carisi’s scent and his warm, solid body next to Rafael, ever eager to pull him into his arms and distract him.

It was something that would be very easy to miss if taken away, and Rafael pulled back for self-protection, expecting Carisi to allow him to do it, but this time, the laid-back alpha had put his foot down. The development was so new Rafael had been tempted to go with it just for curiosity’s sake, but Howe and the trial came first and Carisi understood that, too.

 _Good luck_ , he wrote. _I’ll see you tomorrow._

Rafael didn’t see Carisi at the trial. He was a witness, so he wasn’t allowed in the audience while Rafael gave his testimony, and Rafael arrived late with Howe, only managing to run into Liv, who squeezed his arm and told him not to worry.

“I’ll try to be as composed as I can be without confusing the jury,” Rafael said, quietly, as Howe beckoned him from a few steps ahead. “Of course, I think Howe would like me to burst into tears.”

In the court room, Rafael was mostly looking at Howe and the jury, with only the occasional stray glance in Lawrence’s direction. He had always looked small and breakable, with his thin limbs and snowy pale skin. He was looking down at the table the whole time, meekly, like a proper omega should. Rafael wished Lawrence would have met his gaze so Rafael could prove to himself that he could hold it, but he was denied.

The defence was rather at a loss and only attempted to establish the facts without the emotional slant Howe had given them as he probed for Rafael to give the jury a bit of a show. In preparation, he had told him: “I know you pride yourself on being tough, Barba, but the jury is going to be sceptical if you sit there like the ice king, being an omega and all.”

Rafael’s voice shook just a little when he talked of being thrown down on the mattress; it seemed to please Howe and maybe it would help the case, so he tried not to think about it.

He spent about an hour in court and left feeling drained like an old balloon. As he lowered himself on a bench outside, he stared at his phone without seeing the e-mails he had planned to read.

Someone patted him on the shoulder.

“Coffee, counsellor?” Rollins asked.

The SVU stood collected by the side of the bench, with Rollins holding out a Styrofoam cup towards him. He smiled briefly, taking it from her hand as he got to his feet.

“Do we have time to grab a bite to eat before they get back with a verdict?” Fin asked.

“There should be two SWAT members who go on the witness stand after me, and then Lawrence. Then, of course, we wait,” Rafael said, by way of agreement. “Although I hope the jury won’t take long with this.”

“Let’s go outside for a bit. We’ve all been cooped up in here for long enough,” Liv decided.

Flanked on all sides by police officers, Rafael felt the tension in his chest uncurl slightly. He saw Carisi drifting especially close towards him, then catch himself and stop.

Intentionally, Rafael slowed his steps a little until they walked next to each other. He was allowed to seek comfort today despite their fight, he hoped; and judging by the brief flicker of a smile that Carisi couldn’t hide, he didn’t terribly mind.

-

Their promised meeting happened next day after work, in TJ’s Coffee World down Baxter Street from One Hogan Place, a coffee shop decorated with a cutesy mascot on its glass doors. Though it wasn’t too far away from where he worked, Rafael had never been here – coffee could be acquired more close-by and the bright decoration of the cramped shop was just a little too playful to draw the attorney crowd.

Carisi had arrived before him, still in his suit, and was sitting at a table in the back, his lanky form easy to spot amidst the guests sparsely spread out over the tables. In front of him stood a plate full of small, colourful muffins: black with chocolate sprinkles, pink with their topping formed like roses, light with little whipped cream hats.

“Hey,” Carisi said, smiling. “Thought I’d order some snacks. If you want real dinner, though, I think they got sandwiches and salads and such.”

Though he tried to sound nonchalant, Rafael had seen the way he had straightened up, like a soldier on duty, when he had spotted him. His own stomach, if he was honest, felt queasy as well.

“Coffee is fine.”

Rafael hesitated before sitting down, looking around to the bar, but Carisi was already on his feet.

“My treat,” he said.

Rafael raised a brow. “You’re inviting me?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Wordlessly, Rafael slid out of his coat and hung it over the back of the chair, watching Carisi bound over to the counter and order their coffees.

“Did you trick me into going on a date with you?” he demanded, when Carisi sat down.

The alpha grinned. “I guess so.”

“Since you managed that, I guess you deserve it,” Rafael admitted, picking up one of the small cupcakes, which wore a marzipan flower on top.

“I thought the way we did things was a bit backwards, you know? Maybe we should start off like normal people and get some food together, talk… all that.”

“Carisi, you know my opinion…”

“Yeah, you think I’m not serious about you because of your age and because you’re the kind of omega my family won’t like.”

“And none of these things have changed.”

Neither had the fact that Rafael was still hoping against good sense.

“No, ‘course not. But I’m happy for that. If you weren’t like you are, I probably wouldn’t have that crush on you.”

Sometimes, Rafael had to commend Carisi. Whatever he lacked in some departments, he was vastly braver than Rafael. He would have rather swallowed his tongue than give someone who had already rebuffed him such a wide, open show of vulnerability. He was left briefly wordless and then quieted by a waiter placing their coffee cups down.

“And you’re right about my family, I get that,” Carisi added. “I admit I really didn’t think about that. But in the end, it makes no difference to me.” He stirred sugar into his coffee with a spoon, keeping his eyes on Rafael.

“You say that now.”

“That’s all I can do, right? I can’t look into the future. I know myself, though. I might like my family, but I’m not just gonna mindlessly do what they say if they are wrong.”

It was difficult to argue with that. Rafael could hardly demand of him that Carisi promised he would never change his mind about his affection. It didn’t work like that.

“Maybe we did approach this from the wrong angle,” he agreed, half to himself.

“What do you mean?”

“It seems you’ve gotten _really_ attached to me during my heat, but that’s when I’m the least like myself.” The least like a person, too.

“You didn’t seem that different to me,” Carisi said, looking at him with surprise.

Rafael raised a brow to at him. “That’s coming dangerously close to an insult, Carisi.”

“But you weren’t. You were still a jerk,” Carisi smiled, “you were still smart. You were even a little bossy still, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that with an omega in heat before.”

“As we’ve discussed before, I’m not a good omega,” Rafael said, with a brief smile. He had to admit Carisi’s tone cheered him up a little. “I often think things would be easier if I weren’t one at all.”

With a frown, Carisi shook his head.

“I like you now. I think if you’d been born an alpha you’d be a different person. You’d be more…”

“More like Howe?” Rafael asked. An alpha with a nature completely matched to his temperament, made exceedingly annoying by it.

Sonny grinned. “Not _that_ bad.”

It was a point to consider, Rafael thought, staring into his coffee. He supposed Carisi wasn’t wrong. Being an omega had forced him to see things from another than the accepted perspective, much in the same way that being born in the _barrio_ had. Still, it was difficult to be thankful for the walls you ran up against, especially if people were always so busy putting up higher ones when you thought you’d climbed to the top.

“I suppose me being an omega is quite convenient in one regard,” he said, finally, gesturing at Carisi with his coffee. Alpha and omega – that was the way it was supposed to work out, wasn’t it? The simple formula of nature.

Carisi smiled. He put down a little pink cupcake, leaned over the table and pulled Rafael into a kiss. It wasn’t a very long or deep one, but it was quite decisive, and Rafael felt it down to the tips of his toes.

“Carisi, could you refrain from doing this in public?” he asked, jerking his head back much too late to seem truly displeased.

“I thought I was the one who wouldn’t want to be seen with you?”

Having his own words turned against him like that had Rafael smile against his will, the way he might at a defence attorney who had managed to outwit him. He leaned back in his chair again.

“So if we’re not in public, I get to do it?” Carisi’s grin grew wider as his confidence returned.

For the second time since he had known Carisi, Rafael gave up; but it was another very willing submission.

-

_What did the D.A. want?_

_I will tell you tomorrow. I’m sorry again about the movie._

_No problem, we’ll go next week. It keeps happening to us, huh?_

When Rafael came into Liv’s office the morning after he had had to cancel his date with Sonny, he was wearing a lopsided smirk.

“I’m going to need the files on the Parish case,” he said, off-handedly.

Liv looked up from her paperwork.

“Is Howe making you do his errands now?” she asked.

“No, but after he complained to me over coffee in the staff kitchen and I offered my help, he told me I could have the case if I wanted it.”

It was unnecessary to explain to Liv why that was. The Parish case, involving a rape victim found unconscious in a basement, was a desperately complicated matter, as far as he had understood it from Howe: the victim had changed her story twice so far, there were at least three viable suspects and one of them had already hired a notoriously obnoxious defence lawyer.

“So I guess Howe isn’t really interested in going through thick and thin with us after all,” she noted, raising a brow.

“That and he got a chance to be involved in the prosecution of the murder of the two police officers who got shot on 9th Avenue last weekend.”

The shooting had been going through the media and sparked another flurry of discussions around inner city gang violence and other evergreens to base political ambition on.

Liv snorted quietly. “I guess we’re just not good enough to hold his interest, then. So you’ll be prosecuting the Parish case?”

Rafael raised a hand in defence.

“Well, if you can’t bring me good evidence, I’m not going to prosecute, either,” Rafael said. “But we’ll talk about that when I’ve had a chance to look at what you got so far. I don’t happen to think it’s as hopeless as Howe made it out to be. You’re thinking Jameson, right?”

“Yes, she’s the one we’re mostly focusing on at this point. I’ll call you later, let you know what we find out talking to her. Let Fin give you the files.” Liv paused, then gave a brief smile. “It’s good to have you back, Barba,” she added.

“It’s just one case for now,” he cautioned. “But – we’ll see.”

Still, he couldn’t keep the triumphant smile completely off his face. Liv led him outside, getting the attention of her staff with a brief wave of her hand.

“Everyone, if you want to talk about the Parish case, Barba is now the one to call. Apparently Howe is being kept by other tasks.”

Sonny, leaning past his computer screen, flashed Rafael a wide grin full of surprise.

When Fin had given him his papers (muttering something about how it would at least go to trial this century now), Rafael passed by Sonny’s desk. “There are a few remarks I already have, Detective, would you walk me to outside to discuss them?”

“Sure.”

Sonny grabbed his jacket, which hung over the back of the chair, and followed Rafael to the elevator. The doors slid close behind them.

“I’m still mostly busy with the King brothers, though, I haven’t been involved with this case so much, I-”

His stream of words died when Rafael dropped his briefcase and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt to tug him downwards into a long kiss.

“I confess that wasn’t the expertise I actually needed you for, Detective,” he said, pressing his nose against Sonny’s neck to take in his scent. As he glanced at Sonny’s blue eyes, the skin around them crinkled with a smile, Rafael was sure, for the first time in a long time, that things were looking up.


	13. Chapter 13

It was supposedly spring, but so far it had refused to start; the rain had been coming down for days and even now was splattering heavily against the windowpanes. Sonny stared out dejectedly into the shrubs surrounding the hospital, their few leaves bending heavily under the water. He was tired but too nervous to sleep and yet also too restless to do anything to distract himself.

“One could think you are the father to be.”

Rafael strode into the waiting room holding a paper bag. His hair and long coat were damp from the rain. He handed Sonny the bag before he pulled off his coat and sat down next to him. Having come straight from work, he was still wearing a three-piece suit.

“How is your sister doing?”

“I’m not sure. Tommy hasn’t been outside for a while,” Sonny said, fingers twisting into the brown paper.

“I think that’s a good sign,” Rafael said. “It probably means things are happening.”

Sonny nodded his head and glanced at his phone again. His parents were on vacation in Florida, so since Bella’s kid had decided to be a couple weeks early, they weren’t here, but Sonny was keeping them updated. His sisters had both been here earlier, but they had had to go to work, unlike Sonny, who’d been able to put in some of his overtime to stay with Bella.

“You’ve been here since this morning, you’ve got to eat,” Rafael ordered. Finally, Sonny looked into the bag. Rafael had bought a cream cheese bagel, his favourite. He smiled, and, by the back of his head, pulled his mate in to kiss him on the forehead. Rafael still wasn’t a fan of PDA, but every once in a while, Sonny couldn’t help himself. They were discreet around their workplaces, of course, but they were far from those now and just feeling Rafael’s presence next to him made Sonny happier. For a moment, he simply sat leaning against him, watched Rafael check his briefcase to make sure none of his files had gotten wet.

“How was work?” he asked, eventually prompted by the sight.

“If I play my cards right, you have a warrant for Hyett’s apartment tomorrow, so mentally prepare yourself for that.”

“Great.”

It seemed like the circumstances, or the fact that the waiting room was empty but for a napping elderly woman, anyway, made Rafael a little forgiving because he allowed Sonny to nuzzle him. Howe was still a spectre that hung over the SVU, but by now, he seemed to have mostly settled into the role of leading A.D.A. or whatever he would like to call it, which in practice meant that he dropped in for all the cases that would look good on his résumé or promised attention. Rafael, by virtue of being the first and loudest volunteer with the most experience with the SVU, tended to work the rest. However, since Howe also didn’t like the danger of public humiliation, sometimes his game didn’t work out and it was Rafael who ended up standing behind the microphones. Whether it was a small-time case or a big media circus, Sonny liked working with Rafael better either way – not just for obvious reasons of heavy bias.

Taking his first bite, Sonny noticed how hungry he’d actually been. When, barely a minute later, the door to their left opened to reveal a strung-out looking Tommy who had gone very pale and was smiling broadly, he’d already finished eating.

“She’s here,” he said, brightly. “You can see her now.”

Immediately, Sonny was on his feet. Before he could sprint towards the door, Rafael plucked the paper bag he’d forgotten he was holding from his fingers.

“How’s Bella? How’s the kid?” he asked Tommy, in the door.

“They’re both doing fine, the doctor said.”

Bella looked exhausted and sweaty, but she was smiling, holding in her arms a tiny red baby wrapped in a white blanket. Sonny’s heart lept and summersaulted.

“Look, Sonny, it’s your niece,” she said.

“Good job, sister,” Sonny answered, with a grin, ruffling her hair before he brushed the blanket out of the baby’s forehead. Her tiny fists were curled in front of a round face.

“You can pick her up,” Bella allowed, lifting her hands a little.

Carefully, Sonny took the bundle into his arms and gently rocked it. The baby opened her mouth once in a yawn then rested her head against Sonny’s chest. Tommy looked quite proud of himself.

“Did you have to wait all alone?”

“Well, most day, but Rafael just came…” He glanced over his shoulder. He’d expected his mate to follow him, but Rafael was never someone who easily inserted himself into intimate social situations. Also, considering he’d been pretty spot-on with his analysis of what Sonny’s parents thought of him, too, Sonny couldn’t really blame him for not waltzing into his sister’s hospital room right away. Bella and Tommy didn’t share the elder Carisis’ reservations – they were still grateful for Rafael’s help with Tommy’s case and, besides, as Bella had put it, Sonny had gushed way too much about Rafael to dislike him –, but they weren’t related to Rafael.

“I guess he didn’t wanna intrude,” Sonny noted.

“Oh, it’s no problem! I think if you get your way, he’ll probably be part of the family soon, huh?” she said, smiling at her brother. “Get him in here. Tommy, get Rafael.”

Following Tommy, Rafael walked into the room a moment later, his steps slow and careful. He stopped a few feet away from the bed.

“Congratulations to you,” he said, addressing the parents with a smile. “I hope everything went well.”

“It wasn’t fun, but yes, thanks. You want to hold her?”

“Er, I…”

Rafael seemed to rack his brain for a polite way to refuse, but Sonny got the drop on him and pressed the baby into his arms. A flicker of terror lit in Rafael’s eyes, but he quickly tightened his arms around her, very careful to hold her safely.

“She’s beautiful,” he managed, still seeming worried he might drop her like an expensive vase, but awkwardly shifting her so that her head rested more comfortably in the crook of his elbow.

For a moment, Sonny was quite entranced by the picture. Despite being an omega, Rafael really wasn’t very interested in children, so this was the first time Sonny had seen him holding one, and blame it on biology, but he felt his heart skip another beat. Okay, they hadn’t been together more than half a year yet, but Sonny would do a lot to make sure they’d stay that way.

Rafael met his gaze and was quick to put the child back into his hands.

They stayed for a little while longer until Rafael reminded Sonny that he’d probably have to be at work early the next day to go to Hyett’s apartment. Although Sonny knew he’d come straight back after work tomorrow to check on Bella and little Fiona – that was the name the parents had finally settled on, after endless discussions –, it took a long moment for him to say goodbye.

“She’s adorable,” Sonny said, as they walked down the white hospital hallway.

“It’s good that she’s healthy,” Rafael said, neutrally.

“You don’t think my niece is cute?” Sonny said, in mock-anger, as they stepped out into the night. The rain had stopped, but he could still hear it dripping from the roofs and trees.

“She’s a newborn baby. They all look like red prunes.”

“I bet you wouldn’t say that about your own children.”

“I bet I would,” Rafael said, smirking. “I don’t lose sight of reality that fast.”

Sonny considered that answer for a moment. “So you might have children?”

“If I don’t in a few years, it’s too late, anyway.” He threw Sonny a sidelong glance. “Don’t even try to be subtle, Carisi, I saw the way you were looking at me and that kid. Sitting on that maternity ward all day must have fired up your instincts.”

“It’s not a crime to think about the future, right?” Sonny dared, tucking his arm under Rafael’s.

Rafael stared ahead across the street, quick, bright lights passing them by in flashes.

“I suppose not,” he said, with a brief smile.


End file.
